Choosing between cloud and on-premises deployment is one of the first decisions when implementing a Document Management System (DMS). This guide explains the pros and cons of each model and answers common questions about security, scalability, and backup.
On-Premises vs Cloud DMS Deployment
One of the first decisions to make when selecting a Document Management System is how you want it deployed. Should your organization manage it on internal servers, or use a cloud-based platform maintained by the provider? Both models have their place, and each offers distinct advantages depending on your priorities.
This article explains the differences between cloud and on-premises DMS deployment, with answers to common questions about security, backup, and long-term scalability.
What is the difference between cloud and on-premises DMS?
The difference between cloud and on-premises DMS lies in hosting and management. On-premises systems are installed on your own servers and maintained by internal IT. Cloud systems are hosted by the vendor and accessed over the internet.
Cloud platforms offer easier deployment, lower maintenance, and better support for remote teams. On-premises models offer more control but require greater internal resources.
M-Files is available in both deployment models, allowing organizations to choose the option that aligns with their security, compliance, and infrastructure needs.
Are cloud-based DMS solutions secure?
Yes, cloud-based DMS platforms are secure when properly managed. They often include enterprise-grade encryption, secure transmission protocols, multi-factor authentication, and continuous monitoring.
Top vendors also maintain global infrastructure with built-in redundancy and hold certifications such as SOC 2 or ISO 27001. In many cases, the security standards of a cloud provider exceed what most businesses can maintain internally.
Cloud-first solutions like M-Files apply these protections by default, giving organizations a secure environment without the need for custom infrastructure.
How does a DMS address data backup and disaster recovery?
A cloud-based DMS typically includes built-in disaster recovery and automated backups. Your files are stored in multiple secure data centers, making recovery fast and reliable if disruptions occur.
With on-premises systems, backup and recovery are handled internally. You must create and manage your own policies, storage, and testing protocols to ensure business continuity.
Solutions like M-Files Cloud include redundancy and disaster recovery as part of the platform, easing the burden on internal IT teams.
How does cloud-based DMS scalability help a growing business?
Cloud-based DMS platforms scale easily as your business grows. You can quickly add users, expand storage, or activate features without infrastructure changes.
This flexibility supports fast-moving teams and remote work, one of the many advantages of a document management system. On-premises systems require physical upgrades and licensing changes, which add time and cost.
For organizations looking to grow without constant reconfiguration, platforms like M-Files offer rapid scalability and predictable performance.
Making the Right DMS Deployment Choice
Cloud and on-premises DMS solutions both offer value, but their differences matter. On-premises systems give you full control and deep customization. Cloud platforms reduce your IT burden, deploy faster, and scale with your business.
For many organizations, especially those prioritizing speed, flexibility, and simplicity, a cloud-based DMS offers a secure and practical path forward.
If you’re unsure which approach best fits your organization’s needs, our Ultimate Guide to Document Management Systems discusses cloud vs on-premises in context with other DMS decisions.
When Innisfree M&A found out their previous document management platform would be discontinued thanks to a corporate merger, the New York-based stakes shareholder engagement firm knew they needed to act quickly and deliberately to ensure a smooth migration of their valuable data.
The lesson Innisfree learned in the process? Leveraging the power of metadata, combined with a smooth onboarding process and an easy-to-use interface is a “must-have” experience for any company seeking to fuel a more powerful document management system and maintain a competitive edge.
The Innisfree story
Founded in 1997, Innisfree M&A Incorporated, along with its wholly owned London-based subsidiary Lake Isle M&A Incorporated, is a high-stakes shareholder engagement firm delivering shareholder intelligence, strategic advice, and proxy solicitation services to the world’s leading corporations and investors. Innisfree provides expert advice on shareholder activism, executive compensation proposals, corporate governance issues, investor relations, and more.
Last year, Innisfree’s document management system vendor Worldox was acquired by NetDocuments. Having used the document management system for five years, Innisfree Senior Data Strategist Cody Pannella said the firm had already considered migrating to a new system. That plan catapulted to Cody’s priority punch list last year when NetDocuments announced they’d be sunsetting Worldox.
So now that went from a possibility to a requirement that sort of set things in gear for us to really start looking for a new document management system,” Cody said
A metadata approach
With staff in New York, London, Pittsburgh and Richmond, VA, Innisfree represents hundreds of clients in more than 20 countries. So, Cody and his team knew they needed to ensure a seamless migration and continue to use a metadata-driven document management system. We wanted to make sure that the new product was very metadata focused and it took advantage of the way we were saving files,” he said. Starting with 10 companies, Innisfree eventually chose M-Files as its new metadata-driven document management platforms. Having considered the challenges an IT team will face when adopting a new system, Cody says the M-Files approach addressed each one — from timing to ease-of-use to seamless adoption.
Ease of use
With M-Files, Cody and team were able to onboard a system that felt similar to the former interface but boosted functionality. “[M-Files offered] me more functionality, more options in the metadata I’m using so that I can not only replicate the old system that I have, but I can take it a step further to tweak issues that I’ve had with the old structure and replace that with new metadata functionality that M-Files offers,” Cody said.
It’s all about timing
While Cody leads a team of five professionals, each member had to take time to not only continue their full-time tasks, but also work through testing and proof of concept for the new document management system. Timing was everything.
“We wanted to make sure we were prioritizing the, the major pieces: Being able to prioritize and testing—what are our biggest concerns, what are our biggest issues, what are our biggest features that we’d like to maintain—and going through and finding exactly what fits best,” Cody said.
M-Files made it a point to help with that challenge,” he added. There wasn’t really too much time-wasting—it was easier for M-Files to really showcase what made sense for us. And then we didn’t even need to cover some of the smaller stuff because the bigger stuff was taken care of right off the bat.”
Looking to the future, Innisfree hopes to take their information management game to the next level. Cody adds: “Workflow automation is a big portion that we’re looking into now to be able to automate and sometimes streamline some of the activities and some of the processes that we have internally.”
When it comes to no-code document automation, the question invariably arises: How much access should be given to clients when it comes to template questionnaires, especially as it applies to legal clients? This could include external clients for law firms, those who are paying the law firm for legal services, or internal clients for in-house, those who are requesting services from the legal department. You may be wondering why they need access to the template questionnaire at all! Let’s examine two scenarios: law firm-focused and in-house focused.
Law firms
The starting point for this use case is that the law firm’s employment team has a client who regularly onboards new people into their business, but only ever instructs the law firm to draft the most complex employment or consultancy agreements.
The day-to-day, less complex agreements are dealt with in-house and deemed not to be worth instructing the firm to complete because it’d be too expensive. However, the in-house team prepares their agreements manually (i.e., without automation).
There is a commercial opportunity here for the law firm to gain a stickier relationship with the client. The law firm knows they aren’t going to be instructed for this less complex work. However, it would be possible for the firm to provide the client an automated version of their less complex agreements. They would then be able to create those less complex agreements quicker and easier internally and the firm can provide this as a subscription service to the client.
This is one of the unique advantages of M-Files Ment over other document automation tools out there. In this scenario, it allows the law firm to automate an employment agreement and provide access to their clients. The law firm even has the ability to time limit it or cut off access if the subscription ends. If a more generic template is used it can also be scaled easily across multiple clients too.
Benefits for the law firm
• Additional regular revenue stream • Stickier relationship with client • Ability to provide better service to client • Ease of use if using a more generic template to cover all subscribers
Benefits for law firm’s client
• Internal drafting can be completed more quickly • Satisfaction law firm because they understand their needs and can help them • In-house legal team has more capacity
In-house use case
For the in-house use case, the starting point is when a legal department is inundated with requests for NDAs or DPAs from internal clients, such as sales or procurement. Legal doesn’t want to provide these internal clients with the templates of the agreement because they don’t fully trust them to contract with external parties. Providing the template would give them too much flexibility to draft, possibly adding unnecessary obligations to the company or omitting clauses to “get things through.”
The ideal scenario is for the internal client to be able to draft the agreements with legal constraints built in—for example, restrictions on confidentiality period. The internal client is then able to create an agreement through a questionnaire which always incorporates these constraints—the result is a draft agreement that always contains approved wording.
M-Files Ment can provide such functionality in three ways, depending on the level of control required:
More control for internal client
With M-Files Ment, it’s possible for legal departments to provide the internal user with a link to the template questionnaire. The internal client can then get to the link, possibly through the company’s intranet, and fill the questionnaire. Upon submitting the questionnaire, they have access to the generated document and can then send it to the counterparty.
Less control for internal client
It’s also possible to provide the link to the business user, but when the internal client generates the agreement, it can either return back to a lawyer for review or only produce a PDF at the end to avoid freehand drafting post-generation.
No control for internal client
M-Files Ment also offers off-the-shelf the oneNDA and oneDPA automated templates—agreements designed to be easily and quickly agreed upon as they use market standard wording that shouldn’t be amended. If the internal client is generating these agreements, there will be very little scope to negotiate or make any changes.
Benefits for in-house legal team
• Control of requests for less complex legal documents • Empower business users who can create their own drafts • Less involvement of in-house legal team for first draft. They can be there to review only, saving time and freeing up capacity.
Benefits for internal client
• Empowered to create first draft simple legal documents • No reliance on legal departments for first drafting, improving contract velocity • Use of standardized wording templates allowing quicker agreement of contracts
What if you could do something good for the planet and make your workday easier? It sounds crazy in our digital era, but the average office worker uses 10,000 sheets of paper annually. In the last 20 years, the usage of paper products in the US reached 208 million tons (up from 92 million) ? a growth of 126%.
It’d be one thing if all that paper served an important purpose, but according to one recent study, it’s estimated that about 45% of all paper documents that are printed in offices end up in the garbage by the end of the day. The same study estimates that companies spend more than $120 billion per year — every year — on printed forms. Luckily, there’s a more ecological and economical choice.
By digitizing your paper-centric documentation processes, and automating them, you can unlock powerful efficiency and productivity. M-Files partners with services that help analyze and scan your company’s physical documents, so you can securely digitize your data. Once it’s entered in M-Files, everyone on your team can instantly access the most up-to-date version of a document and share it in milliseconds. No printers, fax machines, or copiers are needed.
Green looks good on you
Deploying a document management solution as part of your business’ green policy won’t just eliminate large amounts of wasted paper, it can also spruce up your image. It shows customers and partners that your company is striving to be more environmentally conscious while potentially creating a more satisfying workplace for employees.
According to a study by Neilsen, corporate sustainability is important to a majority of people ? 85% of millennials and 79% of Gen X say it is “extremely or very important that companies implement programs to improve the environment.”
Many consumers around the world are adjusting their shopping habits to align with their values. For earth-conscious consumers, your business’ ecological actions truly matter.
Going paperless saves time
Organizations with an overarching system in place to handle all their information electronically not only reduce their impact on the environment but also operate at a vastly superior level of efficiency compared to those that still rely on paper files and folders. Given the large expense and inconvenience of paper documents, maintaining them in an electronic document management system leads to a substantial increase in efficiency and a decrease in operational costs.
Regardless of the type of business, you’re talking about, organizations invest in digital transformation for a myriad of different reasons.
Some turn to the power of modern technology to improve efficiency – empowering employees to communicate from department to department easier than ever before. Others want to guarantee that data can flow freely across the enterprise, making sure that the critical information that people need to do their jobs is always in the right hands. Others still do it for cost savings. Not only can a digital transformation save a tremendous amount of money upfront, but it’s an investment that will also continue to pay dividends for years to come.
All of these benefits have always been important – but they’re especially so given everything going on in the world right now with the COVID-19 pandemic.
In March of 2020, as the pandemic first began to make its way across the world, millions of employees suddenly found themselves working from home indefinitely. As a result, many organizations suddenly realized that they lacked the infrastructure needed to support this revolution. In addition to not having access to the tools people needed to work as productively as possible, they found themselves in dire need of solutions that would allow them to share critical information as securely as possible. This is especially true in an industry like accounting and financial services, where firms are dealing with data that is decidedly more sensitive than most.
Even though vaccines are rolling out across the world, the number of remote workers isn’t exactly dropping. One recent study revealed that in August of 2021, about 13% of people were still working remotely full-time due to concerns about the pandemic and the newly emerged Delta variant, among others.
Indeed, working from home is a trend that shows absolutely no signs of slowing down anytime soon – which means that organizations who were preparing for digital transformations prior to the pandemic need to seriously rethink their approach. The world has changed in a dramatic way and there’s no putting that particular genie back in the bottle. This is only a negative thing if you allow it to be. If you approach your digital transformation from the right perspective, you stand to gain enormously in a wide range of different ways, all of which are worth a closer look.
The Shifting Landscape of Post-Pandemic Life
Not too long ago, the team at M-Files partnered with Accountancy Age on a report that detailed what digital transformation – and business in general – has been like before, during, and (hopefully) after the pandemic. It featured survey respondents from a mix of organization sizes, ranging from those with 51 employees all the way up to those with 1,000 or more.
Overwhelmingly, the report revealed that accountancy firms in particular were simply not ready for the transition to fully remote work when lockdown restrictions were originally imposed. A massive 76.6% of respondents said that they initially battled significant challenges in terms of enabling staff to work productively from home – not to mention the difficulty they experienced in servicing clients as effectively as possible.
So much of this has to do with the fact that the accounting industry has long adopted a myriad of different applications and solutions to share, manage and store sensitive business data. This includes but is not limited to chat and video conferencing tools, enterprise content management systems, and more.
The issue here is that this almost immediately runs the risk of creating data silos that firms simply cannot afford to have existed. Again, information needs to be able to flow freely from one segment of the business to the next – regardless of where those employees happen to be. This is true not only in terms of allowing people to effectively collaborate with one another but with regard to empowering workflows as well. If critical data is trapped in a single repository and the person who needs it to do their job doesn’t have access to it – or worse, isn’t sure it exists at all – this only runs contrary to a firm’s goals.
Initially, in an effort to combat some of these risks, many accountancy firms took to sharing information with clients by sending physical copies in the mail. This was true of 44.4% of respondents. Another 79.4% of respondents said that they shared the same information via email. Not only do these methods pose a significant security risk, but they also affect traceability as well – leading to a poor client experience when the opposite should be your primary objective.
The Future of the Workforce Has Arrived
All of these things underline the importance of digital transformation in the modern era – particularly during a time when the “new normal” that we’re all about to return to will likely have little resemblance to the one we left behind.
Case in point: data security. As stated, accountancy firms in particular lacked the infrastructure needed to truly support remote workers in the most secure way possible. In addition to email folders, respondents to the aforementioned survey said that they used files and folders across shared network drives, solutions like Microsoft SharePoint, CRM and ERP systems, dedicated accounting solutions, file sharing applications like Google Drive, and more to manage and share business and client documents within the firm itself.
The right approach to digital transformation is an opportunity to consolidate all of this down into one simple, easy-to-use system that is built with modern workflows in mind. M-Files, for example, is a document management system that allows information to be accessed based on not where a file is stored, but on what is contained within it. All data is stored via a system that can be accessed anywhere, at any time, on any device. More than that, permissions can be set to make sure that only the people who need a particular file to do their jobs have access to it – thus preventing that information from falling into the wrong hands.
Likewise, a digital transformation can be a great opportunity to create branded, customizable client portals that themselves can help accountancy firms better collaborate with clients. Not only does this guarantee the security and privacy of client documents, but it also improves the digital client experience as well.
In the end, a digital transformation is a massive undertaking, yes – but for most accountancy firms, the pandemic has proven that it’s an investment that is well worth making. “Change” and “disruption” are only negative words if you allow them to be. With the right perspective, you can see them for what they really are – opportunities just waiting to be taken advantage of to propel the next decade of your firm’s success and beyond.
Regardless of the type of business, you’re talking about, organizations invest in digital transformation for a myriad of different reasons.
Some turn to the power of modern technology to improve efficiency – empowering employees to communicate from department to department easier than ever before. Others want to guarantee that data can flow freely across the enterprise, making sure that the critical information that people need to do their jobs is always in the right hands. Others still do it for cost savings. Not only can a digital transformation save a tremendous amount of money upfront, but it’s an investment that will also continue to pay dividends for years to come.
All of these benefits have always been important – but they’re especially so given everything going on in the world right now with the COVID-19 pandemic.
In March of 2020, as the pandemic first began to make its way across the world, millions of employees suddenly found themselves working from home indefinitely. As a result, many organizations suddenly realized that they lacked the infrastructure needed to support this revolution. In addition to not having access to the tools people needed to work as productively as possible, they found themselves in dire need of solutions that would allow them to share critical information as securely as possible. This is especially true in an industry like accounting and financial services, where firms are dealing with data that is decidedly more sensitive than most.
Even though vaccines are rolling out across the world, the number of remote workers isn’t exactly dropping. One recent study revealed that in August of 2021, about 13% of people were still working remotely full-time due to concerns about the pandemic and the newly emerged Delta variant, among others.
Indeed, working from home is a trend that shows absolutely no signs of slowing down anytime soon – which means that organizations who were preparing for digital transformations prior to the pandemic need to seriously rethink their approach. The world has changed in a dramatic way and there’s no putting that particular genie back in the bottle. This is only a negative thing if you allow it to be. If you approach your digital transformation from the right perspective, you stand to gain enormously in a wide range of different ways, all of which are worth a closer look.
The Shifting Landscape of Post-Pandemic Life
Not too long ago, the team at M-Files partnered with Accountancy Age on a report that detailed what digital transformation – and business in general – has been like before, during, and (hopefully) after the pandemic. It featured survey respondents from a mix of organization sizes, ranging from those with 51 employees all the way up to those with 1,000 or more.
Overwhelmingly, the report revealed that accountancy firms in particular were simply not ready for the transition to fully remote work when lockdown restrictions were originally imposed. A massive 76.6% of respondents said that they initially battled significant challenges in terms of enabling staff to work productively from home – not to mention the difficulty they experienced in servicing clients as effectively as possible.
So much of this has to do with the fact that the accounting industry has long adopted a myriad of different applications and solutions to share, manage and store sensitive business data. This includes but is not limited to chat and video conferencing tools, enterprise content management systems, and more.
The issue here is that this almost immediately runs the risk of creating data silos that firms simply cannot afford to have existed. Again, information needs to be able to flow freely from one segment of the business to the next – regardless of where those employees happen to be. This is true not only in terms of allowing people to effectively collaborate with one another but with regard to empowering workflows as well. If critical data is trapped in a single repository and the person who needs it to do their job doesn’t have access to it – or worse, isn’t sure it exists at all – this only runs contrary to a firm’s goals.
Initially, in an effort to combat some of these risks, many accountancy firms took to sharing information with clients by sending physical copies in the mail. This was true of 44.4% of respondents. Another 79.4% of respondents said that they shared the same information via email. Not only do these methods pose a significant security risk, but they also affect traceability as well – leading to a poor client experience when the opposite should be your primary objective.
The Future of the Workforce Has Arrived
All of these things underline the importance of digital transformation in the modern era – particularly during a time when the “new normal” that we’re all about to return to will likely have little resemblance to the one we left behind.
Case in point: data security. As stated, accountancy firms in particular lacked the infrastructure needed to truly support remote workers in the most secure way possible. In addition to email folders, respondents to the aforementioned survey said that they used files and folders across shared network drives, solutions like Microsoft SharePoint, CRM and ERP systems, dedicated accounting solutions, file sharing applications like Google Drive, and more to manage and share business and client documents within the firm itself.
The right approach to digital transformation is an opportunity to consolidate all of this down into one simple, easy-to-use system that is built with modern workflows in mind. M-Files, for example, is a document management system that allows information to be accessed based on not where a file is stored, but on what is contained within it. All data is stored via a system that can be accessed anywhere, at any time, on any device. More than that, permissions can be set to make sure that only the people who need a particular file to do their jobs have access to it – thus preventing that information from falling into the wrong hands.
Likewise, a digital transformation can be a great opportunity to create branded, customizable client portals that themselves can help accountancy firms better collaborate with clients. Not only does this guarantee the security and privacy of client documents, but it also improves the digital client experience as well.
In the end, a digital transformation is a massive undertaking, yes – but for most accountancy firms, the pandemic has proven that it’s an investment that is well worth making. “Change” and “disruption” are only negative words if you allow them to be. With the right perspective, you can see them for what they really are – opportunities just waiting to be taken advantage of to propel the next decade of your firm’s success and beyond.
One of the most important things to understand about the data that your business is creating is that you’re talking about so much more than just a collection of files sitting on a hard drive somewhere.
Contained within that data is the context and insight you need to not only understand how far your organization has come, but also to better predict where it might be headed. It holds the key to better understanding your target audience, all so that you can serve them in a far more effective way than ever. It has what you need to understand everything you’ve already worked so hard to build on a fundamental level, thus allowing you to reinforce and strengthen your position moving forward.
In other words, hidden inside that data is a story — and it’s one that absolutely needs to be told.
Data storytelling itself can take many forms — from simple visualizations to complicated investigative pieces and everything in between. But regardless of the exact shape data storytelling takes, the end result is clear — it’s an opportunity to better inform and persuade audiences on just about any topic that you can think of.
Using data to tell stories is one of the best chances you have to engage with key audiences like never before. Thankfully, getting to this point isn’t nearly as difficult as one might think. You just need to keep a few key things in mind along the way.
The Art of Data Storytelling: Breaking Things Down
One of the major reasons why data storytelling is so effective ultimately comes down to the power of stories themselves.
Not only are stories inherently memorable, but they’re also essential to help us process the world around us. Stories help people detect patterns, understand context, and derive meaning from experiences in a way that they may not otherwise be able to. They help us focus on key information and remember it for far longer than we otherwise would.
But within the context of your business, it’s important to understand that the types of data professionals you’re likely working with don’t necessarily get training related to storytelling. They understand how to help you work with your data, but they lack the skills needed to do so more effectively than ever. Therefore, building up your data storytelling skills and empowering those professionals becomes one of the best chances you have to do all of this and more.
Putting Data Storytelling to Work for You
In an effort to empower your own data storytelling efforts, you need to first understand more about the core elements of data stories.
The first, obviously, is the data itself. This means that as your storytelling efforts begin, you need to think about what data you should include for the best results. This means having not only an understanding of your data but also the context of that information, the quality and even the metadata. Familiarizing yourself with the core fundamentals of this data will give you everything you need to build a better story from here.
Speaking of the story, the next most important element that you’ll want to focus on is the narrative itself. What, exactly, are you trying to say with your data? What is your data trying to say to you?
Whether you’re attempting to summarize data, make comparisons between two or more ideas, or even highlight outliers, it doesn’t actually matter — you need to understand the goal of your data story before you can begin to tell it in the most effective way. Start with the main idea that you’re trying to get across and then work your way back to the data, choosing those sources that support the narrative as it unfolds.
Finally, you have the technique of data visualization — something that can help tell your story in a natural and organic way. Human beings are visual learners — they always have been, and they always will be. When information is presented to us visually, we don’t just understand it better — we also remember it for far longer, too.
That’s why data visualization is another crucial element of your data storytelling efforts. By showing, not telling, you make it easier to get your point across in a way that resonates with your audience.
But in the end, you can’t forget to focus on the most important element of all: your audience. By taking the time at the beginning of this process to define who your audience actually is, you put yourself in the best position to get the right story in front of them at exactly the right time.
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