As the volume of information we deal on a daily basis grows, managing it becomes an increasingly tricky challenge for companies of all sizes. Organizing, storing, retrieving, and archiving documents manually consumes significant time and often leads to high error rates. In other words, it’s inefficient. Automated document management solutions allow for quick, accurate processing with minimal intervention.

If you believe automating document management requires digitizing all of your company’s physical files first, think again.

While digitalizing physical documents is part of the digital transformation process, the priority should be establishing a digital-only document culture. This means stopping generating physical documents first and then digitalizing any remaining paper files.

In this guide, we’ll explore how to automate document management from the ground up. We’ll dive into the challenges, benefits, and steps for a high-performance implementation.

Start your journey toward efficiency and productivity with automated document management.

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What is Document Management?

Document management is about organizing, storing, protecting, and controlling access to documents within a company.

Automated document management involves storing files in a database where they are searchable, well-organized, accessible, and secure.

This is achieved through technology such as software or platforms that automate the creation, capture, classification, retrieval, storage, and disposal of documents.

The key pillars of document management include:

• Organization: Adopting an organized system to boost productivity and make document retrieval faster.
• Document Lifecycle: Managing documents throughout their lifecycle, from creation to disposal, ensuring compliance with company regulations and policies.
• Efficiency and Effectiveness: Using technology to streamline workflows, ensuring better access, control, and communication among involved professionals.

But to get there, automated document management systems must meet criteria like security, reliability, availability, and compliance.

How Does an Automated Document Management Platform Work?

These platforms provide features for creating, storing, managing, and sharing digital documents in a centralized, efficient repository.

With automation, authorized users can easily access these documents online, enhancing corporate mobility and enabling remote work.

For instance, Neomind’s Fusion Platform offers advanced search filters, access control, versioning, and detailed logs of document activity. All access, editing and other actions informations are registered with details such as date, time and user.

In our day-to-day work activities, Fusion’s EDM Module provides users with features such as:

• Document Capture: This is the process by which files become digital or electronic. It can occur through direct electronic creation, digitization of physical documents, importing electronic documents such as spreadsheets, emails, or importing from other systems. Additionally, it includes the automatic generation of these documents, such as reports generated by software.
• Centralized Storage: Everything is stored in a single, secure repository for easy document access.
• Indexing and Retrieval: This feature allows each file to receive a type of identification tag with metadata. Relevant information such as title, date, author, and keywords is attached to each document. Indexing is essential for simplifying the search, retrieval, and location of information within the documents.
• Version Control: Tracking document changes and ensuring access to the lates, authorized version.
• Workflow Automation: Streamlining processes like approvals, notifications, and signatures.
• Information Security: Offering access control, encryption, and auditing to protect layers to ensure document integrity.

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In the digital age, it is unacceptable for companies to continue working with physical, paper-based documents. A document management solution is nothing short of crucial for organizing these files, optimizing processes, improving security, and increasing productivity.

Businesses that do not have automated documents suffer from storage costs, higher risk levels, information losses, and many other inefficiencies.

Capable of bringing a wide range of benefits, this is a complex topic that should involve all areas of the company, as well as its processes and people. Given how positively this type of management can transform your business, learn how to implement a document management solution.

Why is document management so important?

Document management is a process that includes the generation, organization, filing, and proper and secure disposal of documents. This encompasses all types of papers that exist in a company.

Due to the many competitive advantages it offers, it is important to consider the nature of the documents and their specificities. In addition, management requires the establishment of classification guidelines and access permissions.

Overall, document management ensures that the company achieves its objectives by making routines more productive.

Another issue is the organization and accessibility of documents. When opting to implement a document management solution, the handling of files changes.

Adopting a technological solution like Fusion Platform allows you to find any document quickly and easily. It also prevents the duplication of information, loss of documents, errors, and risks related to misplacement and non-compliance.

The key point is that information is always accurate and up-to-date, accessible via the internet, contributing to corporate mobility.

Implementation involves a series of critical steps, starting with assessing the organization’s needs, followed by choosing the appropriate technology and integrating it with existing processes.

Implementing Document Management

Although it may seem like a complex task, by following a few simple steps, implementing a document management system is practical and straightforward.

In a simplified way, the first essential step is to conduct a detailed analysis of current workflows and identify inefficiencies and risks. Next, it’s time to choose a robust platform, like the Fusion Platform.

Finally, the implementation begins with categorizing existing documents, configuring access permissions, and creating automated workflows integrated with documents.

Assessing your business needs

The first step in document management is understanding exactly what the company needs. In this case, a department must be selected so the transformation can occur gradually.

At the initial stage, goals and objectives must be set. Defining specific values, such as a percentage increase in productivity, facilitates tracking the results.

Knowing where you want to go, it’s time to understand how activities currently happen. Analyze the workflow to identify the types of documents generated, the level of complexity, and how they should be managed. The more detailed this stage is, the better the results will be.

Choosing the right technology for the job

A document management solution is a great ally in the mission of digitally transforming your company. Therefore, choose wisely.

Keep in mind that this solution must be able to meet the business’s needs and achieve the defined objectives.

Neomind’s Fusion Platform is a tool that helps manage processes, documents, metrics, risks, and digital signatures.

In addition to process automation, all documents are generated or digitized by the solution. This provides a much more organized, accessible repository with centralized information.

The solution is user-friendly, customizable, and scalable to meet the business’s specific needs. It also fully integrates with other systems, allowing for the collection of data and documents from different sources.

Solution Implementation

Implementing a document management solution like the Fusion Platform is very simple. Since we are working with records, the new activity flow must be established to incorporate automation.

In this regard, improvements should be applied, such as the use of forms, automated workflows, and access permissions:

• Configuring access permissions: Before a document is published, the Fusion Platform allows you to define which user or user groups will have access to its content. With the creation of profiles, the interaction between records is managed, determining who can view, read, create, or modify them. Organized into folders and subfolders, there can be different levels of permission, emphasizing the high level of reliability. Another highlight is the possibility of sending notifications when a document is attached, needs a signature, or is nearing its expiration date.
• Creating automated workflows: This involves defining a logical and orderly flow so that actions and steps are completed. It is necessary to determine what will trigger each action so they can be properly configured. Always test the flow to ensure it works as intended within the company’s routine.
• Creating forms: There’s nothing better for management than standardization. This is why the Fusion Platform provides functionalities to create fully customized forms. You are free to create various fields, such as text boxes, selections, option buttons, among others. Add conditions so that fields are displayed based on each user’s responses.

The implementation of a DMS solution should prioritize continuous improvement. This means that your company needs to monitor performance and analyze results to identify opportunities to further enhance the management of documents and processes.

Getting to know Fusion Platform’s document management Module

Being a comprehensive solution, Fusion Platform offers a series of features that provide invaluable benefits.

The document management module centralizes storage, facilitates retrieval, and ensures document security. It also includes:

• Organization and indexing: Documents are classified and organized to facilitate search and retrieval.
• Version control: All changes are logged and trackable by the system, ensuring document integrity. Every user who accesses the repository knows which version is being accessed.
• Security: With access control, sensitive data is protected against unauthorized access or misuse. The user can enable and register different types of authentication.
• Integrated electronic signature: This allows documents, such as contracts, to be signed digitally with the same legal validity as a physical file. Signers don’t even need to be users of the Fusion Platform. The request can be sent via email or WhatsApp, ensuring total practicality and convenience.
• OCR: A technology that recognizes text and extracts information from scanned documents. Automation allows for quick, agile, and error-free data collection and completion.
• Auditing: Traceability makes audits easier, especially when checking access, updates, and proof of compliance.

Besides, the processes and the company’s performance as a whole can be monitored in the Central Analytics. Risks can also be managed and mitigated in the Risk Management module.

Bringing numerous positive impacts, document management is more than a necessity; it is a differentiator that provides competitiveness. It can be the factor that keeps the company efficient in facing a competitive market.

Transform your business today. Try Fusion Platform and have your documents in one place, easy to find and ready to use.

OCR is a technology that has been nothing short of revolutionizing how we capture information from images. It’s a tool that, when adopted by companies, allows them to automate reading and interpreting their digital documents.

Essentially, the technology consists of converting documents or images into editable and searchable text.

In this sense, we can safely state that Optical Character Recognition increases operational efficiency and provides a much more accurate analysis of the data contained in natively digital or digitized documents.

Digitizing and archiving documents, information retrieval, process automation, and accessibility are some possibilities offered by document management platforms that feature OCR capabilities.

Due to its immense importance for document management and process optimization, let’s dive in everything that involves OCR technology.

What is OCR?

OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition. It’s a technological feature capable of converting an image or digital document into copyable and editable text.

When you take a photo of a document and your phone allows you to copy the text as if you had typed it is precisely what it does: it gives us the ability to extract data in the form of actual text.

Although very useful, it isn’t a feature that steals the spotlight. After all, it works in the background, the text is extracted, but the extraction mechanism is not seen.

You know that you can copy the text entirely and paste it into a message, for example, but you don’t actually realize that OCR is doing it.

Without Optical Character Recognition, an image is just an image. We simply can’t edit, copy, or search for items present in that file.

OCR can recognize letters, words, patterns, line items, phrases, and in some cases, handwriting. To improve the accuracy of data extraction, the technology is commonly associated with Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence.

Therefore, the feature adapts and gets better as it is trained, expanding the range of processed documents.

The moment a company decides to adopt this type of solution, the possibility for process automation goes to a whole new level. As it works with large volumes of data, OCR reduces manual operations, ensuring greater productivity and performance.

How does this feature work?

The functioning of OCR consists of identifying and understanding the characters in the image, transforming them into binary codes understood by the computer. The processing happens in three parts:

• 1st Pre-processing: initially, the technology will seek ways to make the image clearer and more suitable for data capture. This includes eliminating shadows, converting everything to black and white, re-framing, and excluding what is not text;
• 2nd Recognition: at this stage, there are two methods employed. The first is a comparison between the extracted characters and a previous base of symbols to recognize patterns. The second captures each characteristic of the text, such as edges, curves, and contours, to compose a format and converge to an identification that appears to be the closest.
• 3rd Post-processing: finally, the eligible characters from the image are compared to a word base consistent with the context, according to a specific logic. Subsequently, the OCR algorithms check which element in the database has the highest percentage of chances of matching the extracted character. Thus, the text is recognized, with errors corrected and formatted according to the rules of the language or idiom.

It may seem complex, but the information extraction process happens in a matter of seconds. This explains why OCR is such an important part of business document digitization and sorting.

Advantages provided by OCR

Within businesses, OCR can be used in processes from different departments, such as finances, management, accounting, and marketing, just to name a few. Among its positive outcomes, the following stand out:

• time saving, efficiency, and agility;
• automation of processes where document data is automatically extracted;
• reduction of rework and backoffice costs;
• reduction of errors resulting from incorrect manual entry;
• simplified workflows;
• better user experience without the need to fill out extensive forms, and no rejections due to typing errors or incorrect information entry;
• document verification and database search, such as the Federal Revenue Service, reducing fraud;
• digital accessibility;
• improvement in document organization and control, enabling information retrieval;
• greater security and document compliance.

OCR in Electronic Document Management

It’s practically impossible to talk about efficiency in document management without mentioning OCR. Every day, companies receive and process a large volume of data and documents. This scenario justifies the need to adopt an electronic document management system.

In practice, firstly, Optical Character Recognition will validate the received document, analyzing the image quality and automatically rejecting photos that are not documents.

Regarding electronic document management, Fusion Platform works with OCR in its GED feature. This combination digitizes and automatically converts documents, eliminating the need to input data manually.

Thus, it is possible to extract relevant data, such as name and date of birth. This information can be added to process forms, ensuring workflow agility.

Documents are indexed so that the extracted data is categorized and can be searched according to criteria or keywords.

In this sense, within companies of various sizes and fields of activity, OCR is useful for:

• digitizing documents and facilitating storage and search;
• extracting information from images such as receipts, invoices, bills, and other documents;
• making PDF files editable and accessible;
• speeding up the workflow;
• automating tasks involving text manipulation.

Neomind’s Fusion Platform uses OCR to extract information and make documents searchable with full permission control. In other words, only authorized users can access, manipulate, and edit certain documents.

PDF files are converted into editable texts, and future modifications will be attributed and recorded in the digital versioning flow. Documents can also be digitally signed, with all security and legal validation.

Don’t waste more time extracting data from documents manually, implement document management and reap all the benefits of OCR.

Try Fusion Platform and check out these and many other advantages.

In our modern world, where speed and security are essential, managing processes and documents has become a central concern for many organizations. The need to ensure document integrity, from creation to archiving and disposal, raises important questions about the use of electronic and digital signing methods, such as integrated electronic signing.

Document life cycle and electronic signing

For many, electronic signing may seem like the ultimate solution when it comes to document security and validation. However, it is crucial to consider not only the moment of signing but also the entire document life cycle. Before signing a document, it is crucial to ensure the traceability of the process that generated it in the first place.

And after signing, there arises the need to manage the document in terms of validity, renewal, retention, delivery, and proper disposal.

Daily practice reveals that documents can be both the result and the starting point of organizational processes or actions.

For example, a contract may arise as a result of a negotiation process, while an expense report may trigger a reimbursement process.

Therefore, effective document management goes beyond simply applying an electronic signature. When considering the adoption of a document management solution, it is essential to address the complete business scenario.

This involves defining requirements and a comprehensive view of the entire document life cycle. Ignoring this holistic approach can result in significant compliance and management challenges later on.

Document management with integrated electronic signing

When managing self-contained documents or those that start a process or action after their creation, it is crucial to establish clear guidelines for their life cycle.

This includes determining the rules for removal or disposal, approval or publication, and who has the authority to execute these actions.

Additionally, it is important to define who can or should sign the documents and ensure proper traceability and recording of all activities related to these company assets.

In a second scenario, when managing documents that are a consequence of a process or action prior to their creation, it is also essential to define appropriate procedures for managing this cycle.

This includes ensuring compliance with the authorization levels for generation, respect for departmental cycles, generation of records and traceability, and alignment of responsibility assignments with company policies.

Moreover, it is necessary to establish who can or should sign these documents and ensure that all involved parties agree with the outcome achieved.

It is important to emphasize that a simple electronic or digital signature does not resolve all aspects of document management.

In fact, in many cases, it can generate additional problems, such as loss of traceability, unauthorized access, and lack of clarity about the final version of the document.

When evaluating compliance and document signing strategies, it is crucial to adopt a comprehensive approach that considers their entire life cycle. This not only ensures compliance with regulations and internal policies but also promotes operational efficiency and information security.

In summary, integrated document management and digital signature not only offer immediate benefits in terms of security and efficiency but also establish a solid foundation for continuous improvement, cost reduction, and enhanced performance of the involved teams.

It is an essential approach for organizations looking to stay agile and competitive in a constantly evolving business environment.

Fusion Platform: document and process management platform with integrated signing features

Neomind’s Fusion Platform is a comprehensive solution for document and process management, offering essential features to ensure integrity and security at all stages of their life cycle.

By integrating document and process management, Fusion Platform enables a holistic approach to handling electronic signatures and the complete traceability of the process that originated the document.

This integration helps organizations effectively meet compliance and management demands, ensuring not only the validity of signed documents but also proper governance throughout the entire document process, from conception to final disposal. Try Fusion Platform for free for 15 days.