In compliance, standard operating procedures (SOPs) are all about what you do, how you do it and how you can be in compliance while doing it. Developing and documenting SOPs is generally a one-time challenge for businesses.
What regulatory compliance really comes down to is proving your SOPs are followed.
As more regulations are imposed on companies, what are you doing to strengthen your business’s ability to adhere to compliance regulations and where can document management software help?
Why Document Management Software Makes Sense For Compliance
Documents play a pivotal role in regulatory compliance. In a paper world, it’s tough to prove that your SOPs are being followed 100% of the time. Using a paper-based checklist system to ensure sensitive documents are being dealt with correctly and securely is a time-intensive and increasingly impossible process.
By automating SOPs through workflows and leveraging document permissions and security controls in a digital environment, you ensure workflows hold their defined paths and only the right people have access to secure documents.
Top 4 Reasons Businesses Use Document Management For Compliance Control
1. Security for stronger data protection
2. Process automation to ensure SOPs are followed
3. Audit ability to prove adherence to compliance regulations
4. Workflow and document control to reduce compliance risk
Document Management For The Compliance-Conscious Business
Below is a set of features designed to improve compliance adherence alongside better document management:
- Rights management so only the right people have access to specific documents
- Workflow control through process automation
- Auditing functionality and features to prove accountability and auditability
- Version tracking to audit editorial changes and, if needed, revert to previously saved versions
Compliance Risk: The Fear Of Being Out Of Compliance
Compliance risk puts entire businesses in danger. With customers becoming increasingly aware of and concerned about data protection, the wrong move could be deadly to a company’s reputation in the marketplace. Fears of fines and incarceration are also driving compliance change.
Where and how you host your data is as important as how that data is managed and disseminated throughout your organization. In some situations, compliance is a nightmare with many faces. But a good place to start for many businesses is fixing disconnected and disorganized document-centric processes.
Outside of secure document storage, the regulatory compliance benefits from document management software make the investment worth looking into for small, medium and enterprise-sized businesses.
Start exercising better document control in your business today by downloading our guide to taming document management chaos.
