How much of their time do your employees spend creating documents? It may be more time than you realize, and it could certainly be used elsewhere. Further, when employees create paper documents those have to be stored, taking up your space and creating the need to manage the documents.
Document automation can both streamline employee workflow and reduce the need to store paper documents. Document automation is not new technology, but it's more than just going paperless. It is about maximizing the productivity of your employees and creating workflows that make more sense and allow your business to thrive.
What Does it Mean to Automate a Document?
Your business likely relies on several key documents. Perhaps you have files for customers, order forms, reports and more. To explain document automation, let's pick a document type that almost every business needs: HR forms. Let’s say an employee is joining your company and HR needs to fill out paperwork for this.
With document automation, your HR staff has access to the relevant document templates for hiring forms. The form is saved, digital, and doesn’t need to be adjusted. Much of the information that belongs in the form is automatically populated into it. Think of when you go to buy something online and Google fills in your address for you on the check-out for you.
Document automation works like that but can be even more sophisticated. The software can collect several documents like in-take forms and turn them into the start of a year-end review form. The software may present decision trees and generate paperwork automatically based on the choices your staff make. It can also send forms to others, allowing multiple team members to easily sign off on key decisions like hiring.
With automated documents, your HR professional will spend less time filling out the forms, and this gets your new employee to work faster and the HR professional back to other tasks. That is just one small efficiency that document automation can introduce into your business. Ultimately, anywhere that someone is filling out a form, report, or paperwork, they could have software speed up the process for them. An overall effort to integrate document automation into your business can help you save countless hours and become more productive and lean overall.
Employees appreciate document automation because it frees them from paperwork and allows them to focus on their job. The side benefits are that this also means there is less physical paperwork to manage. You can also eliminate existing physical papers with document scanning.
What are Document Generation Tools?
Document management software is the tool that you use in order to automate and manage your documents. There are various software tools available for this purpose.
What is Automated Document Production?
Automated document production is just another name for the use of automated document generation tools. Most software tools that generate documents will also organize your digital documents,
The Benefits of Document Automation
There are many advantages to using document automation, including:
- Easy Access: Anyone within your company can access the documents they need in a single, well-organized, and digital platform. This saves time and headaches.
- Improve Efficiency: With better templates and more information added automatically, your employees are only ever putting new information into their documents. This is highly efficient. Even creating brand-new forms for your business from our templates is more efficient.
- Team Collaboration: Allow your staff to collaborate on the same document even when they are not in the same room.
- Client Access: Send documents to clients faster and allow clients to access old files, saving you the time of sending the document out again.
- Fewer Errors: Automation means less data entry for your staff and fewer opportunities for them to make simple mistakes. You’ll have more accurate files.
- Document Security: You can allow employees and clients access to the documents they need to see, and not the documents that they don’t need to see.
- Storing Documents: Digital documents don’t take up the same physical space as paper documents.
- Environmental Impact: You’ll print less and therefore make a smaller impact on the environment.
Document automation is not the only option. Discover if our imaging services are right for you and how to compare us to other document scanning vendors.
Improve Your Workflow Today
With the many benefits of document automation, your company could gain the competitive advantage it needs by adopting our software.
Have questions or want to learn more? Let’s get in touch! We’ll help you find the right document automation and management software for your business.