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What’s the best way to control documents?

Cybersecurity

The creation and issue of documents is integral to any organisation; customer contracts, sales proposals, financial documentation, employment agreements, internal reports and countless other documents are prepared and sent every day. But how do you ensure that the content of those documents is accurate? How do you control the process of creating documents?

For companies looking to achieve ISO 9001 document control is a key requirement, however, any organisation can apply the principles of document control to achieve increased efficiency.

In ISO 9001, one of the required processes is the Document Control Procedure, which specifies the controls required to achieve the accreditation. These include document approval, review, revisions, version control, legibility, quality and distribution.

Use of a document automation solution like HotDocs ticks many of the ISO 9001 required boxes outlined above. Creating first draft documents from the intelligent interview provided by HotDocs provides more accuracy, vastly decreasing time taken for review and approval. Using HotDocs templates for document production ensures that content is accurate and correctly formatted, as well as providing content control around language and legibility. Document quality is improved and version control is built in to the user interface – guaranteeing that the most up to date template is used to produce the document, while keeping a record of previous versions.

Implementing a HotDocs document automation solution is straightforward. Once you have the software – either on premise, in the cloud, or as a hybrid of both – the subject matter experts for your documents simply transform frequently used documents into dynamic HotDocs templates by turning the changeable pieces of content into HotDocs mark-up. The template is then made accessible for the staff that create and issue the documents and a new, customised document is produced in seconds by completing a HotDocs interview. Alternatively, HotDocs can pull data from any other business application, such a CRM system or enterprise database, to automatically complete the fields necessary for the final document.

Document control is offered every step of the way. Permissions can be set so that only a select group of users can access the template, updates to documents are completed centrally and automatically issued to users, references or barcodes for document identification can be added automatically, interview answers can be stored and used again to create additional documents and HotDocs can be integrated with approval workflow to make sure that everyone who needs to check the document can do so easily.

The document control provided by using HotDocs is also utilised by many organisations to enhance compliance and reduce risk. Changes to legislation or internal policy can be applied instantly to the document template to assure compliance and templates can be forward-published so that they appear to users on the date required – negating the risk of issuing an old, incorrect version of the document.

Whether your organisation is going for ISO 9001 accreditation or is simply keen to improve the document creation process, using HotDocs to produce documentation offers far greater control than traditional methods, while speeding up the process to save time and, therefore, money.

To find out more about how HotDocs document automation software can help your organisation to enhance document control,schedule a 30 minute demo.

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