Document control is the process of managing documentation throughout its lifecycle. It helps organizations to ensure that documentation is accurate, accessible, and up-to-date and that it meets regulatory and quality standards.
This article outlines some common document control challenges organizations face and how document control software can help address them.
Common Document Control Challenges
Document control is pivotal in ensuring an organization’s operations run seamlessly. Whether it’s to remain compliant with evolving regulations, foster collaboration across departments, or ensure the accuracy of vital information, addressing common challenges is paramount.
Ensuring Document Accuracy and Integrity
Given the importance of document retention, many organizations hold on to old documents they no longer need. As regulations are updated, many of these documents become outdated, and they end up clogging up the system. This can make it even more difficult for employees to manually find the information they’re looking for, leading to a loss of productivity. In the worst case, it can lead to employees accidentally using outdated documentation.
Streamlining Document Approval Processes
Using a manual system for document approval means that documents can get lost or unknowingly trapped in someone’s inbox while they’re away on vacation. This can significantly slow down the document approval process, leading to significant delays and employees trying to push documents to get approved at the last minute.
Enhancing Document Retrieval and Accessibility
Trying to find documents manually can be frustrating and time-consuming. In some cases, if employees cannot retrieve the documents they need, they may give up on trying to find them altogether and rely on their memory instead, which can lead to errors.
Managing Document Changes and Revisions
Keep a complete record of the changes and revisions made to your documents if an error occurs and you need to revert to a previous version. However, not everyone in your organization should have permission to view or revert to these changes — especially if they contain sensitive information.
Ensuring Compliance with Regulations and Standards
Reviewing documents before releasing them is important to ensure they comply with current regulations and standards. This is even more important if your organization is in an industry where regulations are updated frequently.
Collaboration
Often, documents need input and approval from multiple people across departments. Managers sometimes try to solve this problem by transferring them back and forth via email or by creating more meetings. This is inefficient and makes collaboration difficult.
Overcoming Implementation and Adoption Hurdles
Implement an adequate planning strategy that defines goals, allocates adequate resources, and establishes a roadmap, making implementation much more complicated.
It’s also important to implement adequate employee training and awareness that helps employees understand how to use the software and outlines how they can benefit from it. Employees can also resist change when it comes to adopting new software, as it can be time-consuming and require them to learn new skills.
Leveraging ETQ Reliance for Effective Document Control
Using ETQ Reliance for document control can address document management challenges within your organization by helping you automate your processes and providing a way to track your documented processes and procedures.
This software provides a centralized and secure location where you can manage the creation, review, distribution, and archiving of your documents. This improves efficiency and makes tracking regulatory changes and maintaining compliance easier.
The software allows you to create unlimited workflows to seamlessly route documents through review and approval processes and automatically send reminder emails for upcoming or overdue assignments. It’s also easy to integrate with other software like Google Docs and Microsoft Office.
Take Control of Your Document Management with ETQ Reliance Document Control Software
Using document control software can help you improve your document accuracy, help you manage changes and revisions, ensure compliance with regulations and standards, and improve collaboration between team members. This can help to avoid common document management problems and improve productivity.
Consult an expert to learn more about ETQ’s document control software and learn how it can help you optimize document management within your organization.
