Selecting a Smart Document Solution? 5 Facts Before you Do

Managing documents can be a tedious task – and this amplifies with “paper” based documentation. So smart decision-makers like you, try and switch to “paperless” document management.

But selecting the right document management partner can be quite challenging. Here are some benchmarks on which you can decide the right “paperless” migration partner for your business.

Before you start searching for the one, here are some aspects you must keep in mind.

So how to select the right Document Management partner?

1. Select a vendor with expertise in your industry

While every business process can be executed without “paper”, not every business process is the same. Each industry has its own unique workflows, regulatory compliance, and related documentation challenges. Pharma, Lifesciences, or manufacturing organizations, for example, in the EU, have to comply with GxP regulations. Hence it becomes imperative to hire the right Smart Document Solution vendor that is well-equipped with handling your industry-specific challenges.

Ideally, you must skip the ones that claim to migrate virtually any organization away from paper. Before you make a decision, ask questions like if they have a scalable infrastructure, and do they support the security & compliance directives of your organization.

2. “Integrations” are a must have

Going paperless is not about digital signatures alone. A key aspect of “paperless” documentation is migrating current offline business processes to “digital” only means. And for that, your new Smart Document Solution must integrate seamlessly with your current software. Since the key idea behind Smart Document Solution is to bring all your documents on a single platform, it’ll be the ideal choice to select a Smart Document Solution partner with the right integration potential.

For enterprise businesses, a well-built Smart Document Solution must work in unison with your day-to-day business processes, including your resource & customer relationship management. For reasons like productivity & minimal chances of error, a consistent solution that bridges all your business processes is the ideal choice for a Smart Document Solution.

3. Collaboration is necessary

Documents are the building blocks of collaboration. Right from contracts & invoices, to memos & purchase orders, ongoing collaboration is crucial for a faster turnaround time. Be it a locally hosted Smart Document Solution, or a cloud-based solution, it is important that document creators & reviewers can collaborate seamlessly on a single platform, where changes are reflected and recorded in real-time.

A Smart Document Solution with centralized control & any-device access can help your employees create & review documents on the go. Moreover, real-time collaboration reduces the chances of errors & makes documents tamper-proof with a record of each change across the entire document lifecycle.

4. Security & Compliance

Whether you plan to self-host the Smart Document Solution on your server, or opt for a cloud-based solution, security & compliance must have the “veto” power over other features. While there is a common misconception that cloud-based solutions are low on the “security” metric, one thing must be noted – if the vendor is reputable, the sheer scale of operations help them implement additional measures to protect your data, which might not be the case if you try to set security protocols in-house.

Compliance, needless to say, is quite variable as per your industry focus. Be it manufacturing, education, legal, pharma, or lifesciences, every industry has its unique set of compliance requirements. But with the right Smart Document Solution that has a lot of exposure in your industry, achieving regulatory compliance will not be a challenge.

5. Support

For an enterprise business, time-critical issues must be resolved in real-time. Selecting the right smart document partner doesn’t mean the tech stack, or integrations alone – but how far they are ready to go with you, when it comes to ongoing issues.

In absence of quality customer support, your processes might come to a halt, if at some point of time, your document solution builds a problem. Resolving the issue quickly is what required from your “paperless” partner, and can go a long way in streamlining your business processes.

Here’s a checklist you can refer to, during your demo call with your Smart Document Solution partner.

Keep this handy on your demo call!