Controlled or managed documents are vital records that support the daily operations of an organisation. These controlled documents consist of varied document types such as policies, procedures, templates and checklists relating to the different functions within the business.
Whether you are concerned with compliance, safety, quality or just delivering a consistent customer experience, controlled documents play a key part in communicating to employees the right things to do and how to go about them.
Document control management is especially important if your documents change frequently and in industries where accuracy is paramount such as mining, construction, manufacturing and engineering.
Here are some of the mistakes we see every day.
1) Lack of document lifecycle planning
Because of the critical nature of most managed documents, they are seldom “set and forget”, requiring regular review, update and approval. When designing workflows you need to take into consideration the life cycle of each document from creation to disposal. Some of the questions you might be asking are who reviews, approves and publishes a document? Who needs to access the document and what are the different levels of permission? Are some staff just consuming the document and others creating and editing? How frequently will this document need to be updated and how long should it be retained before being archived or destroyed? Understanding the entire lifecycle of the document will help you design the right system for managing controlled documents.
2) Digitising without optimising
If you are seeing inefficiencies, errors, bottlenecks and stalled document approvals, implementing new technology will not solve the problem. You may inadvertently lock in the very inefficiencies you are trying to eliminate. Take the time to thoroughly interrogate your current processes, responsibilities and systems, then ensure they are optimised before introducing a new document control platform.
3) Manual approval workflows
Many organisations continue to circulate document updates via email with tracked changes, a method that is outdated. It's time to move away from the 1990-esque practice of emailing versions with tracked edits. We work with organisations to move to a more contemporary method by adopting SharePoint for handling document approvals. For those who already using SharePoint for managing documents, (and we think you should be!) implementing workflows in Power Automate is recommended to streamline and track your review and approval processes.
4) Lack of update visibility
Every action taken on your controlled documents must be tracked, including who made the change and when. These documents are an essential component of quality control, compliance and safety and an audit trail is essential. Again, SharePoint has you covered here, keeping track of changes and updates. You can see changes that were made (created, edited, deleted), when (3 hours ago, yesterday, last month) and by whom, and restore a previous version if necessary.
5) One path that all must follow
People look for documents in different ways. They may prefer to search, browse, or search then browse. Forcing everyone to access documents the same way leads to frustration and non-compliant storage and sharing. A central digital policy hub can provide access according to user preference and discourage sneaky emailing.
6) Inconsistent naming and classification
Let’s face it. Some teams – ahem, Sales – cannot be trusted to name documents in any kind of sensible way. Others might tend towards the obscure and overly bureaucratic. Naming and classifying documents systematically is critical to efficient document storage and retrieval. A clear, repeatable system for naming and classifying managed documents will help everyone find what they need.
7) Chaotic archiving
Just because you don’t want to store data for immediate access doesn’t mean you never want to find it again. Create and distribute a process for archiving controlled documents, detailing which ones should be archived and how, based on your document management platform. Then ensure everyone is doing it the same way. Designate archive process ownership for accountability and check your archives regularly.
8) Neglecting proper training
Like any important business process, user training on accessing and updating your controlled documents is key. Without it, users may experience frustration and inefficiencies in document retrieval and collaboration. Poor awareness of advanced features will waste your platform capabilities. Inadequate training also increases the risk of errors, data breaches and security vulnerabilities. Make sure your implementation plan allows time and resources for training.
We could talk about controlled documents all day. It’s what we do. If your current system isn't working or you just need some help to set it up correctly, contact us – we’d love to help.