Small businesses and startups with limited tech prowess often find it challenging to keep up with ever-evolving regulations. These organizations often lack the resources to handle compliance, leading to a sense of overwhelm and anxiety. However, this need not be the case anymore, as there are several effective ways to improve regulatory compliance. One highly successful but often ignored way to do it is through intelligent document automation. In this blog, we will learn the different ways in which document automation improves compliance for a business. But, first, some basics.
What exactly is document automation?
Document automation is a process that streamlines document creation process on a large scale. It does this by automatically pulling data and specific information from different sources and embedding it into pre-defined templates. This process also incorporates business logic, approvals, and other necessary workflows. There are several benefits of document automation. It is especially advantageous for teams and business users who frequently produce complex, data-driven documents. It also saves countless hours for your team while ensuring that the documents are accurate, well-structured, and compliant with relevant regulations.
How does document automation increase compliance?
Now that you know what document automation is, let us understand more about its key role in improving compliance in your organization –
1) It standardizes documents
The process of document automation uses predefined templates to ensure that all documents consistently adhere to brand standards, regulatory requirements, and industry norms. This automatically reduces the risk of human error, ensures uniformity, and maintains a high level of accuracy across all documents. Whether it’s a contract, report, invoice, or policy, standardization ensures that the document is complete, consistently formatted, and fully compliant. Moreover, standardization simplifies internal and external audits, making it easier to identify any issues and demonstrate compliance with regulatory bodies.
2) Consistent use of up-to-date information
Document automation leverages data from centralized databases. This ensures that every piece of information included in a document is current and aligned with the latest updates. By pulling data directly from reliable sources such as customer relationship management (CRM) systems, enterprise resource planning (ERP) tools, or other integrated databases, automation minimizes the risk of discrepancies caused by outdated or incorrect data. This approach helps maintain compliance with regulatory standards that require the use of accurate information.
3) Audit trail and record-keeping
Automated document processes come with capabilities like version control, change tracking, and audit trail maintenance. This ensures that every action taken on a document is recorded and traceable. They also capture a detailed history of document creation, modifications, approvals, and user interactions. This creates a transparent log of all activities. This capability is crucial for demonstrating compliance with regulatory requirements, as it provides verifiable evidence that documents have been handled in accordance with established protocols.
4) Automatic regulatory updates
Document automation processes powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning can be configured in such a way that templates and content are automatically adjusted when there are changes in laws, regulations, or internal policies. This capability allows organizations to stay ahead of evolving compliance requirements. For instance, the processes can be configured to proactively update documents with the latest legal language, standards, and guidelines without manual oversight. Automatic updates also save time and resources by eliminating the need for employees to constantly monitor regulatory changes or manually revise documents.
5) Faster document processing and approval
Automated workflows accelerate the whole document processing and approval cycle by directing documents to the appropriate stakeholders for review. They utilize predefined rules to identify the correct approvers based on roles, responsibilities, or specific criteria, ensuring that each document reaches the right person without delay. Additionally, automated reminders and notifications prompt stakeholders to review and approve documents promptly, minimizing bottlenecks that often occur with manual processes. This streamlined approach not only speeds up decision-making and improves turnaround time but also ensures that documents are handled in a timely manner, reducing the risk of delays that could lead to non-compliance or missed deadlines.
6) Enhanced security and access control
Document automation processes are often designed with advanced security measures such as role-based access control and encryption to protect sensitive information. While role-based access control restricts document access to authorized personnel based on their job roles or responsibilities, encryption safeguards data by encoding it during storage and transmission, making it unreadable to unauthorized users. These security measures help prevent data breaches, unauthorized access, and misuse of sensitive information, thereby ensuring compliance with data protection regulations like GDPR or CCPA.
Services vs Tools: Which is the right way to implement document automation?
AI-powered document automation platforms are good, no doubt. They offer the necessary speed, accuracy, and consistency in managing repetitive tasks. From purchase orders to service agreements, these tools can also handle different types of documents. However, even the most advanced document automation systems require a human touch to ensure contextual relevance.
While standalone document automation software can handle specific tasks like generating templates or automating simple data entry processes, it often lacks the comprehensive technical support, customization, and scalability that an expert team provides. A service provider will also provide a more robust and future-proof solution for businesses from different industries looking to streamline their document generation processes.
Long story short, when it comes to implementing document automation, opting for a reliable service provider with extensive experience in automation technology is always better than relying on standalone tools.
How can Appglide help?
We are an operations and automation expert who partners with global SaaS startups and tech companies to help them rapidly scale. We have years of experience and expertise in automating various business processes, including document management. Our expert team at Appglide uses advanced document understanding technology to create robots that can automatically interpret data from your documents. Not just that, we can develop robots and AI tools that can easily handle unstructured and highly variable data and standardize them to meet compliance. Want to know more about us? Contact us now.