5 Key Benefits of Document Workflow Automation for Your Enterprise in 2023

Document management is a pain for most businesses.

In fact, according to a recent survey by M-Files, a Finnish startup pioneering document workflow automation, 65% of employees face challenges when reviewing and approving documents.

Some of these challenges include but are not limited to finding the correct document version, mislabeling of documents, complicated signature processes, or the need to access the physical device where company documents are stored.

Here’s where document workflow automation shines.

Once you deploy a battle-tested document management system, you’ll have ready answers to almost all of these challenges. What’s more, is that most employees want an automated system for naming and tagging documents anyway.

In this article, we’ll explore 5 key benefits of document workflow automation for your enterprise, so that you can be well-rooted on your digital transformation endeavor.

Let’s get started discovering how you can shape the success of your enterprise while leaving behind document management inefficiencies.

1. Increased Productivity

Employee productivity should be top on your to-do list.

However, working with documents can be a bitter and cumbersome experience for your employees.

In fact, according to a recent report from Wakefield Research, 54% of US professionals say they spend more time searching for documents and files than responding to emails or messages.

This increases the chances that a document gets lost or misfiled. So basically, you either have to locate these files or reproduce them which results in time wastage.

For example, a sales team may have to wait for days before the legal department approves a contract. The HR department may have to manually process hundreds of employee forms every month.

But did you know that your workers could be spending this time on tasks that actually benefit your company rather than looking for lost documents?

An automated document workflow that handles your documents can boost employee productivity, save time, and reduce stress. For example, an automatic routing system can route the documents to the right team member for review and approval.

The solution is an efficient document-generation process that improves the accuracy of the data and is less prone to human error, thereby creating a seamless experience for your customers.

Filecenter, for example, introduces an innovative file system by using electronic filing cabinets. Through one-click scanning and automated OCR, you can transform your document generation process.

Couple this with automatic rules-based naming and routing, and your productivity can see new heights.

2. Enhanced Security

How secure are your company documents?

Getting your confidential documents in the wrong hands can make your company's data vulnerable, besides possibly getting you in trouble with law enforcement for breaking compliance regulations.

Having powerful encryption systems such as 256-bit Advanced Encryption (AES) and following compliances such as HIPAA, FERPA, SOC2, and CCPA enables you to provide secure document sharing and managing for your company and customers.

It’s because businesses, startups included, are always being targeted by hackers and people with malicious intent. Small and large companies face data loss and data breaches on a regular basis.

A document management workflow equips you with all such security benefits, no matter what type of document you need to deal with. You can control who can view and access your documents, ensuring privacy.

Storing your documents in a secure cloud rather than more accessible storage systems can add to document security. Dell reports that 44% of IT decision-makers view cloud storage as their top focus.

With a document system, you can encrypt documents, provide access to only authorized personnel, and generate audit trails.

Additionally, your business can benefit from watermarking, password protection, and automated document expiry, features offered by document management software.

In fact, a case study from Locklizard shows how ARM, a leading technology provider of processor IP, took control of their sensitive and confidential document data by using their document security tools.

It highlights how ARM used PDF expiry, secure PDF writer, screen capture prevention, location locking, and protected web viewing from Locklizard to secure information.

3. Easy Collaboration

Are you working on a task with other team members?

Communication tools, remote file access, and sharing are crucial for a good collaborative environment in any company.

Before document management systems were so common, employees would find it hard to work on a joint task.

In a survey conducted by Laserfiche, 31% of respondents welcomed the idea of a unified repository for all documents across the enterprise as the most important document workflow feature.

With disparate tools and platforms, miscommunication is common, the result of which is a painful collaboration process, which strains work relationships.

A unified document-sharing platform, real-time co-authoring, and efficient review and approval processes are some noteworthy benefits of document workflow automation for your enterprise in 2023.

These can change the way your employees practice collaboration at work and simplify the document workflow. Better collaboration results in the tasks being in sync and real-time accountability.

You can create an environment where team members can work on documents together, no matter where they are.

A seamless document workflow system can handle such collaboration issues and provide solutions for better management of workgroups. This gets rid of communication gaps, easy and fast document sharing, and fast work turnaround.

So by leveraging platforms like Orangedox, you can quickly set up virtual data rooms that enable you to securely share your confidential documents between parties.

This can be a huge time and cost-saving potential for Mergers & Acquisitions businesses. With secure file sharing, you can ensure easy email collaboration, cloud integration, and participant analytics, informing you who is interested in your business.

4. Easy Version Control

What is document version control, really?

Every document goes through a life cycle where it’s signed, reviewed, approved, revised, or rejected.

Having access to every version of the documents allows you to go back to any version when necessary. However, handling different versions of the same paper is not quite easy, especially when you have more than one department involved.

Even if you have all the versions available, you need to manually compare each version to find the changes.

A Perforce study established that 83% of knowledge workers lose time in document versioning problems every day. This includes repeatedly inputting edits from others, working on the wrong version, and not being able to find the correct version.

On the flip side, by leveraging document workflow automation, you don’t have to be confused about which is the most recent version of a document.

These solutions have built-in version control systems that allow you to track all changes, have easy and instant access to any past versions, and recognize the latest one.

It’ll create a new version of a document each time you edit it, then route it to the right member to ensure everyone is working on the latest version.

Warwick Township, a municipality in Pennsylvania, was facing challenges in maintaining its property records. One of the challenges was retrieving different versions of a document.

Once they turned to Docsvault, a popular contender in document workflow automation, they were able to automate their document version control system, which enabled them to manage multiple versions of a document with ease.

5. Improved Accessibility

Visually impaired people are unable to read documents that are not formatted in a particular way or don’t follow standards.

Statistics from the WHO show that about 2.2 billion people have some kind of visual impairment problem.

The global productivity cost for this is estimated to be $ 411 billion.

Here’s the thing, going through dozens of complex documents, whether physical or digital, can prove to be challenging. As a result, people with disabilities are excluded from essential information, affecting their participation and independence.

So an automated document system can benefit your business by improving how fast and easily you have access to documents, and this includes those with special needs.

By generating accessible documents, especially when it comes to PDFs, you can reach all kinds of audiences by improving readability.

Features like text-to-speech and structured document formats that follow the WCAG standards can make your documents inclusive so that disabled people can independently access, read, and interact with these documents.

This promotes equal access to information and services for your employees and customers, something that might be painful to implement when done manually.

PDFix is a great example. It allows you to create accessible PDFs that are PDF/UA compliant. In fact, you can incorporate their C++ & Java-based SDK into your document workflows for automated document remediation.

It applies PDF remediation techniques to make documents more accessible with auto tags, proper headings, alt text for images, appropriate colors, easy section navigation, and more. You can convert regular PDFs to PDF/UA for accessibility & compliance.

Conclusion

Automating the document workflow process is not a privilege but a necessity.

Did you know that the Nitro productivity report estimated that companies spend an average of $20,000 on document issues?

Imagine how much you could save by implementing an automated document workflow system that takes care of all the document handling in your business.

I’d go ahead and say that, regardless of the industry your business is in, you can still greatly benefit from workflow automation, or you’ll be streamrolled by the competition.

If you want to create a good company environment, satisfy your customers, and increase your profit margins (fingers crossed), then document workflow automation solutions are worth looking into.

Now on to you.

Have you used any document workflow automation solution before?

What are some of the challenges you face when incorporating automation into your, rather manual but working, document management process?