Oftentimes, we forget to value time as we do other goods and services. It is easy to put a cost on technology, but more difficult to monetize the cost that technology saves us in terms of time and productivity. On the same note, it is also difficult to determine how much money we have lost fumbling through inadequate or outdated technology to accomplish our tasks throughout the day.

In terms of technology due diligence, one of the most important steps is to evaluate the level of productivity that the technology will afford, and how it will contribute to the value of your time. Saving time on large projects by cutting corners is an unwinnable strategy, but doing those same tasks efficiently and completely in the same amount of time is smart business. What then needs to be evaluated is how you can leverage technology to save time, thereby saving money. If you find yourself saying multiple times throughout the day, "There has to be a better way to this," there probably is.

You don't need to solve fancy algorithms or complicated formulas to determine whether or not you are losing money by wasting time. You just need to evaluate how much time, on average, you are spending to complete simple, day-to-day tasks, and if there are parts of those tasks that could be improved or streamlined if technology was put in place to supplement those projects. As a document and email management service, we find firms who are spending an inordinate amount of time on:

• Searching for a specific document or set of documents

• Organizing and categorizing documents and emails

• Sending documents back and forth with clients and/or co-counsel

• Deciding how to file and manage multiple versions of the same document

• Running cumbersome document comparison processes

There are multiple tasks that technology can streamline, like the ones mentioned above, but the more critical tasks to evaluate in terms of time loss are the ones that are done most often, yet are burdensome and time intensive. Technology should be considered a useful resource, not a distraction from getting work done, and certainly not one that wastes time.

So, next time you are frustrated fumbling through outdated technology or manual, tedious processes to get things done, ask yourself, "Is there a better way to do this?"

Want to see what modern, time-saving document and email management looks like? Download this whitepaper