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For organisations that require thorough control of their documents, a document control & management system has become an indispensable means to ensure that business processes are managed efficiently and in a cost effectively way. A web-based online document control software provides a central repository for the safe storage and the circulation of documents following pre-determined workflow rules. This includes the creation of new revisions or versions, the sending of the documents on the approval sequence and the notification to staff when the new revision has replaced the document that was currently published. Before Document ControlBefore document control software was available, the process of controlling documents was very manual and time consuming. For instance, you could have a situation where several staff members had the right to change an existing document, they would do that by making changes directly to the document and once completed they would print it out and then send it round to the approvers. Two problems could arise, the first one being that the master file was corrupted as the changes were made directly to it instead of making the changes to a copy of the master file. The second problem was the length of time it would take to get the necessary approvals. Say that the new revision had to be approved by 5 people and the document would be sent round, through the internal mail system, to all the 5 people in turn so that each could review and sign their approval. However, due to travelling, sickness or other priorities the approval process could take a very long time and it was not an uncommon occurrence to have an important document be walked round to the approvers so as to speed up a lengthy and laborious process. Then if the relevant standards required the proof of comprehension of the recently published documents this would create further time consuming work. In order to do this staff could be made to sit tests at regular intervals or were asked to sign a document certifying that they had read and comprehended the contents of the relevant documents. The Effective Way With online document control software all these processes are simplified and speeded up. All task notifications are automatically sent out by email from the application to the approvers when they need to review and approve a document or when a new revision has been published and replaced the prior revision. The approvers can perform the approval task from any location, whether on the road, at home or in the office. Also, a comprehensive history trail is maintained by the document control software application. So when a staff member with access to the system performs an action on any document held within the system a record of that action is recorded. Examples of these actions would be the creation of a document, the approval or rejection of a document, the publishing of a document, the issuing of a change request, the approval or rejection of a change request, the check out and check in of a document as part of the versioning process, the reviewing of a document and more.... With the ability to securely access the web-based online document control software from any location the electronic signatures, required by regulatory regimes such as the FDA 21 CFR Part 11, are automatically recorded as part of the change history of the documents. Online quizzes can now be added to the documents either from within the document control system itself or from a sister module and can be activated when a new version is published, resolving the difficulties of proving user comprehension. Finally, document control software facilitates the entire auditing process as everything is held within the system and the audit trails of each document demonstrate compliance at each step to the requirements of the document control process. Document control software improves efficiency, profitability and compliance with regulations. When used in the form of an online web-based application document control software becomes accessible from any location, is quick to implement and provides a substantial return on investment.
Christopher Stainow, Chief Executive of Lennox Hill; creators of isoTracker Quality Management System & hosted Document Management Software.
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