By the time you finally find the right file, you've wasted valuable time with nothing productive to show for it.
Sounds familiar? If this scenario hits too close to home, it might be a clear sign that your organization desperately needs a document control system. But what is document control?
Let's find out what document control is, the importance of document control, and how using Effivity can simplify the whole process for your organization.
What is Document Control?
Documents are an essential part of almost every organization, but without proper management and control, they can quickly become a hassle. To truly serve their purpose, documents need to be accurate, easily accessible, secure, and compliant with industry regulations. Simply put, your organization can't really function effectively without a well-structured document control system.
Document control is a systematic process that is used to manage and control critical business documents throughout their lifecycle. It involves putting in place a carefully designed system for reviewing, tracking, approving, submitting, and versioning a document.
The process ensures that any documented information, such as quality manuals, standard operating procedures, policies, records, flow charts, quality plans, checklists, databases, etc., is properly maintained, secure, and accessible to only authorized individuals at the right time.
You can use it to track regular document activities like who authored the document, how often it's been viewed, which user accessed the document, or how many versions of the document were created.
Traditionally, document control was done manually. However, with technological advancements, several platforms and software tools have emerged that can streamline the whole process effectively, and Effivity is one such document control software.
Understanding the Importance of Document Control
Document control is important because it streamlines document management and provides a centralized system for organizing, accessing, and tracking critical records. It keeps records reliable, trackable, and transparent, so nothing gets lost or mismanaged.
Let's understand the significance of document control for your organization in detail.
1. Enhanced information retrieval
An efficient document control process ensures that all your necessary business documents are organized, indexed, and stored in a centralized system. With structured categorization, tagging, and keyword-based searches, users can quickly locate documents without sifting through clutter.
This makes it easier for your employees to retrieve the required information swiftly, saving time and improving productivity.
2. Regulatory compliance and quality assurance
A robust document control process ensures quality assurance by complying with the following quality management standards:
- ISO 9001:2015: Section 7.5.3 of this standard requires documents to be controlled to ensure they are available and protected from loss of integrity or misuse.
- ISO 13485:2016: Section 4.2.4 of the standard involves control of documents that includes reviewing and approving documents before they are used, updating and re-approving them as needed, and keeping track of their current versions and changes.
- EudraLex Volume 4 GMP Part I: Under sections 4.1 to 4.6 of Chapter 4 of this standard associated with good manufacturing practices for medicinal products, there is a requirement for the generation and control of clearly defined documents.
Effivity QMS is an automated quality expert software that can help you achieve excellence in quality management. It can handle a range of functions like governance, risks, compliance, internal audits, customer complaints, etc., providing you with a one-stop solution for all your quality management needs.
3. Version control
Managing several versions of a document can be quite challenging without a proper system in place. Document control enables version control, which ensures that only the latest version of a document is used. This avoids confusion and errors that may be caused by outdated information.
The process also maintains an audit trail through which you can easily track and record changes, authorship, and version history of every document, allowing for better transparency and accountability. Without document control, it can be quite difficult to prove unauthorized or inappropriate document exposure.
4. Data Security
You may have to deal with a lot of confidential information during business operations, such as financial data, customer records, and intellectual property. Document control offers security features like access controls, encryption, and audit trails that can protect your confidential information from unauthorized access.
Additionally, it can also provide backup and recovery capabilities if documents are lost which ensures business continuity in case of unforeseen incidents.
5. Better collaboration
With document control, team members can collaborate effortlessly, regardless of their physical location. Through a centralized platform for storing and sharing documents, your organization can facilitate real-time collaboration, version control, and edits, which can lead to improved teamwork and faster decision-making.
How Effivity Simplifies Document Control for Your Organization?
Effivity is an efficient and simple-to-use document management software that optimizes your document control process. With this cloud-based software tool, your employees can instantly access the documents they need, exactly when they need them. Effivity can simplify your document control process in several ways. These include:
1. All important documents and files can be stored in a central database.
2. It can define the department, document type, and document name for specific document that is to be controlled.
3. Your employees can easily upload, classify, and search for documents while using the software's friendly interface.
4. With complete control over distribution and updates, you can instantly modify documents whenever necessary
5. You can create a new document with a live document editor and track any modifications with the help of version numbers, which are auto-generated and increased for each controlled change.
6. The software ensures documented information is available to different users as per defined access control rights.
7. The cloud-based feature of the software guarantees the information is available and protected through secured encryption of data.
8. It archives old or obsolete documents if there is a version change and makes the most recent version of the documents available to the users.
The Bottom Line
In today's fast-paced business landscape, efficient document control isn't just a convenience, it's a necessity. Without it, you can lose valuable time and resources that can be better utilized to boost your organization's productivity.
A well-structured document control system ensures that the right people can access the right documents at the right time without any unnecessary delays.
However, to simplify the process, you must use secure and powerful software like Effivity, which can effortlessly streamline your document control process by leveraging the latest technologies like artificial intelligence, secured encryption, and cloud-based storage.
To learn more, visit Effivity’s website today!
