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How the Hassle Over Lost Documents Might Be Costing You Thousands Each Year Companies could be saving $3,747 a month per employee with better file-management technologies.

By Rose Leadem

entrepreneur daily

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

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Companies are wasting a lot of precious time searching for documents, and more than two-thirds of professional services executives say they've spent time working with a document only to find out they had retrieved the wrong version.

The overall cost of searching for a document in these companies is unfathomable. In the U.S., a typical professional services executive spends 89 seconds looking for that long-lost document. Working on an average 26 documents a day, that amounts to an average hourly rate of $265 lost in billable time. Think of it this way: Per month, a firm is losing an average of $3,747 per employee.

This is according to a survey conducted by Huddle, a cloud collaboration technology company. Huddle gathered data from 200 accounting, advisory and management consulting firms throughout the U.S. and U.K. Unsurprisingly, a majority of these firms agreed that the top inefficiencies were collecting documents from clients and approval processes.

While 92 percent of respondents see value in having a secure client portal to share information with clients, 70 percent of them resort to using email for file sharing, a system that risks data confidentiality.
Rose Leadem is a freelance writer for Entrepreneur.com. 

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