Storage and document management go hand in hand - and both cost money. I doubt many small or medium businesses really think about them in the grand scheme of things. Ultimately if you have disk space, you can have folders and you have files that masquerade as documents.

For many years I worked in organisations with such mentalities - some of whom even allowed me to store important documents locally. However it all came to a head a couple of years back when my house was broken into and my work laptop was stolen... it's only then that you realise how silly it was to keep things locally. I lost all that was dear to me... and you can imagine how foolish I felt.

Even more recently, I found myself putting things on a server, and getting lazy about it... then when it came to hunting down a particular file just before a meeting it suddenly became clear about how difficult it was to find. I knew that a server search was possible - however I also knew how long it was likely to take.

The really stupid thing on my part was that I had been educated many years ago about document management and how important it is. On both occasions I regretted geting lax and not doing what I knew was right.

I know I'm not alone - and while many people may not admit to being vulnerable to such moments, I wouldn't mind betting that we all are at some point.

It's also really hard to get IT departments to make wholesale changes - as this requires a full on business case and re-education, which is timely, requires ROI analysis and is going to cost. If you don't have an IT department, where do you start?

Well, just try to find something affordable I guess, affordable easy and easy to roll out.

To be fair you could do worse than Glasscubes document management as a starting place!!