Document Management Software for Document Control

Document Control is necessary to reinforce controlled processes and practices for the creation, auditing, amending, issuing, distributing and limiting the availability of documents to users. This ensures that the documents made available to the users within an organisation are reliable and contain the latest available updates.

It is especially useful in organisations where documents may need to be frequently amended to keep them updated with the most recent legislation and information, and those which are regulated, where the unintended use of outdated documents may lead to unnecessary undesirable results and penalties.

If your organization creates significant numbers of documents and those documents are critical to your business, if they are updated regularly and you need to know who updated a document and when this happened, a document control system is essential. Storing multiple copies of files in different locations will cause a major problem! Which is the master version?

A true Document management solution product is superior to a simple document filing product or file server, especially when it comes to document control. The software can provide the following benefits.

• All documents are made available and distributed from a central repository which can easily be updated anytime. This eliminates the need to issue the latest version to users every time there is an update; instead users can just download the latest copy from the document management system when required.

• Ease of tracking all the changes that are made in the life of a document from the time it is originally saved into the software to the latest version. and time. Users can check the “audit” page to see the updates and the last updated date and time along with comments and instructions before using a document and be certain that the resource is the latest available. Previous versions of a document are retained to provide a complete audit trail.
  
  
• Unauthorised access to certain documents or clients can be invoked. This accessibility control is a must have to maintain confidentiality of important documents so only the intended and permitted audience can view the document.
  
  
• The ability to add warnings and notes for viewers that are accessing those documents, and lock documents that are being worked on to stop users from circulating outdated documents.
  
  
• The ability to automatically forward documents for the attention of certain users when a change has been made and also record their comments or send instructions along with the document.
  
  
• The ability to generate reports with update data stored in the database easily using the templates and merge facility. This feature is very useful for documents that are to be updated very frequently. Variable values can be updated in a database and the reporting tool or merge tool can update those documents using the database variables.