More Work, Less Time

Business documents are in a state of perpetual change. As your company grows, your forms and document management solutions must keep up with that growth and the marketplace’s demands. Today, we will examine the situations companies face during periods of expansion and how to handle some of the challenges associated with rapid growth. With user-friendly applications like DocOrigin, organizations can turn document development over to business users to create new materials as needed while maintaining control over the brand and legal compliance.

Changes Mean Challenges

Document change requests and requirements come from many angles. Healthcare, education, government, and insurance all have specific language requirements. Business functions within an organization also require frequent document updating. Human resources, legal, and marketing forms must keep up with legal and market changes. To further complicate matters, document updates often cross business functions. For example, a marketing document with performance and outcome claims also lives in the legal domain. Until recently, any change to a business document, even a simple one, required intervention by the IT department or someone with coding expertise. Backlogs in the IT department often prevented them from responding to business unit requests for document modifications. Business line users are closer to their audience than anyone else in the organization. They audit the legal or regulatory language environment and have a hand in designing their respective documents. Giving these users the power to make immediate document changes ensures compliance as the organization grows and the number of sales, customers, or employees increases.

Manual Versus Automation and Exposure

As organizations grow, their business requirements change. In a startup business with a handful of customers and documents, the Office Manager may have enough capacity to make document changes themselves. The modifications could be as simple as editing a remittance address on an Excel spreadsheet. For organizations with many customers and documents though, manual updating exceeds the bandwidth of a single individual and complex modifications require skills beyond their ability. Growth requires not only document production automation but also requires subject matter knowledge. Risk levels increase as laypersons attempt to craft the legal language necessary for health care, human resources, and privacy policy, increasing a company’s exposure to fines or lawsuits.

Document Templates

Document generation software is based on the template. Templates are where the document updating process originates. Create templates for invoices, contracts, legal briefs, policy documents, and other frequently used items with document management software. Forms include branding elements and boilerplate text, such as payment terms and legal disclosures. Document management software applies business rules (if this, then that) to create the correct document for a specific circumstance. For example, a late payment notice will include different remittance instructions than the original invoice. Templates limit access to specific sections of business documents, such as the delivery address or the corporate return policy. The organization allows departments access to document areas relevant to their functions. For example, the accounting team only changes the document real estate reserved for “late pay” messages. They cannot change a marketing offer or notice of privacy practices.

Chance of Error

As companies grow and document requirements increase, errors creep into the process. Growing organizations cannot monitor a large amount of data manually. The benefits of document management software include reduced costs, redeployment of labor, and increased productivity—rewards sought in any business investment. But automated document management software offers something more–increased accuracy and improved customer experience. Incorrect payment terms can impact cash flow dramatically. Mistakes like including regulatory information for Iowa on a document addressed to New York can expose companies to legal action. A misplaced decimal point in a promotional offer might erase all profit or make a product seem ridiculously expensive or unbelievably cheap. Errors in customer-facing documents prompt excessive calls to customer service and brand image problems. These situations can be avoided in effective document management environments where only workers with identified proficiency or titles can access specific areas of secure documents.

Non-Technical Workers Updating Documents

Organizational growth means “growing pains.” Chances are high that no single individual or department is dedicated to documentation. Business users must make their changes without an IT resource. The good news is that modern document generation and management applications feature a drag-and-drop builder to simplify changes and eliminate the coding process. Traditional software coding is not needed. Anyone can build a functioning application or a platform without writing computer code. This reduces the burden on IT departments and allows them to focus on system updates and enterprise infrastructure improvements.

Solution

Eclipse’s next-generation customer communications management platform enables organizations to build and execute effective communications while lowering operating costs and ensuring compliance. Our technologies provide banks, insurers, and other regulation-sensitive companies with ways to improve regulatory management. DocOrigin stitches government-mandated forms in their original state into the originating document pack. The software uses regulatory intelligence to automate the process for rapid document updates. An intuitive interface and no coding give an organization the power to meet all regulatory requirements and deadlines and offer superior customer service.