8. Very difficult to assign & manage custom document attributes

Custom properties / attributes / metadata are available only for certain document types. Even for these types it is a difficult manual procedure, frought with mistakes in data entry (limited field validations), no smart interaction between fields (like limits between lists, visibility and security, links & feeds from other databases, conditional highlighting, and much more). 

 The result is - they are rarely used. Furthermore, they are simply embedded in these documents with no easy way to use them as true metrics for searching, reporting or automation with other business processes or systems.

9. Lost documents, 7% on average

On average 7% of documents are lost annually according to research organizations. This is when documents are deleted - by mistake or on purpose, or moved - again, by mistake or on purpose, and can no longer be found. Deleting from various FTP folders, servers, etc, has no "undo" function. Many users do not realise this!

Corrupt or bad data can be stored and backed up continuously until one day the company realises they cannot retrieve the original document content, so have to re-create it.

10. Server space constantly increasing,

Duplication of data, unnecessary and unintelligent backups can increase volumes dramatically. This puts strain on servers, it increases the time needed for antivirus scans, batch automated scheduled jobs take longer, increases size of indexation, processing power, downstream equipment (backup and other network devices), clogs bandwidth if accessed via VPN and many more well documented issues.

There is a direct relationship between efficiency in storing, organizing and accessing data and the efficiency of the entire organization.

11. Deleting, overwriting, moving and re-naming issues, accidentally or maliciously

Users can perform all these functions, accidentally or... maliciously. It is very difficult (if not impossible) to determine who did what and when.

12. No audit trail,

Cannot monitor general changes as above (11) but what is even more difficult is incremental changes within documents themselves. Other issues crop up - who opened that confidential document? Who saved all company documents in a flash disk before they found another job? And many more issues stem from lack of an Audit Trail system.

13. Where is a file used? What is the impact of change?

Complex files are not managed. These compound files and the metadata/information within them relies on other files. Users do not know where a file is used. Even if a register (spreadsheet) is kept for this purpose, the act of documenting the change in this manner is so difficult, costly and prone to human manual errors, that it is impossible and completely unreliable for any business that has the bare minimum of complexity in their products / procedures.

Hence, when users move, edit or delete files, they will undoubtedly break some inter-relationships between documents, registers and systems. Examples of this are; 3D CAD packages (SOLIDWORKS, Inventor, Creo, CATIA, etc), AutoCAD (x-refs) Microsoft Excel files, desktop databases, and many more.

Managing the impact of change and knowing what to update when a component, document, record or procedure has changed is vital to quality control and the success of the organization.

14. No Processes, no notifications.

File managers do not offer an "Approval" or "Change" process for instance (or any other processes). Other third party software would be needed for this, or more extensive folder structures and complex manual procedures. 

Some companies use spreadsheets to document this type of activity as well as uncontrolled emails, attachments, and a plethora of other tools. All need to be kept in sync, manually.

15. No lifecycle management.

As above, cannot track a document from conception through approved, changed, in service and finally obsolete stages. Manual management approach to this particular issue is complex and practically unmanageable, as mentioned above.

16. No batch-printing.

Although can send multiple files in one-go to various devices, this is quite limited, higly manual, laborious and does not deal with many complex document types (internal reports, letters, etc) and batch-printing automations.

17. No Reporting or analyzing.

Cannot report on internal information within documents. There are only some simple statistics provided (such as number of files, folders and dates) which are almost of no use to most organizations.

Even if the metadata is kept in external registers, at best this is unreliable due to manual updating processes throughout while at worst, it is unusable.

18. Concurrent working is difficult

Overwritting each-others work, not being able to change a document over extended periods (e.g. over a few days) as other users may overwrite / delete / move in the meantime. Working on complex documents (see 13) can ruin a lot of other user's work, increase costs and risk to business.

19. Global Collaboration is limited and difficult

This is as above (18) but even more difficult due to multiple sync operations. This is usually set during a neutral time when sites are not working - which cannot always be the case, hence syncs can fail, corrupt files or cause delays, timezone date differences, different working cultures and patterns.

20. Publishing and sharing documents

Difficult to share documents (in a controllable manner) with Clients and Vendor chains from windows explorer. VPN's or other shares can be created, which leads to more manual maintenance, duplication and mistakes. Companies rely on other software (usually emails) to distribute files. 

Sending documents through emails presents security risks (interceptions), failure to deliver, as well as many obsolete / out-of-date files and information floating around. Third party manufacturers and vendors end up producing components based in the wrong revisions - this can be very costly. 

Many organizations simply write this cost off and accept it as part of their everyday business.