One of the most relevant questions every company asks is “how to make business processes more efficient?”, this is especially important in meetings, training and reporting. Document management systems nowadays are a huge asset to any business that automates and streamlines daily processes, ensures better visibility and control.
Read on to learn HOW companies can improve their document management processes to reduce time spend on admin tasks and boost productivity.

NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement)

NDAs are particularly important when you’re disclosing sensitive business information and want to avoid illegal use or information abuse. Before starting to draft an NDA, you need to know what information and terms are going to be disclosed and what’s the general purpose of the agreement. One of the essential points of an NDA is its legal aspect – a company must ensure the document is legally correct and complies with state laws; therefore,d it requires input from authorities before sending out the agreement to sign. To guarantee smooth and efficient handling of NDA form, consider following these steps:

1. Create a self service NDA portal – A single button for requesting a new NDA process
2. Adopt smart NDA templates – allow end user to pick appropriate NDA templates based on certain predefined rules. It can cover 90% of of the use cases
3. Create smart clauses that can be considered as pre-approved and does not require legal approval
4. Publish NDA tracker – that shows documents that are stuck somewhere
5. Analytics – Track clauses that typically are responsible for most of the delays and incorporate them in your smart clause library

Status reports

An exemplary status report shows the status and the stage of the project in a concise manner, and the best practice is doing status reports weekly to ensure its visibility. The problem that managers experience is the need to chase their employees for status reports, back-and-forth emails and delayed feedback.

DocuCollab can assist in overseeing that you get reports on time, set up email notifications and provide real-time comments. To stay in control and on top of your weekly status reports thus ensuring you’re not wasting your time, try applying these tips:

1. Gather all the data required and set parameters of your status report
2. Create a template
3. Take already used data from other sheets, combine them to track the progress
4. Set up a reminder update requests for each goal owner to update the status of their project on a weekly basis

Meeting minutes

The correctness and clarity of information is an important aspect of well-written minutes. Companies often underestimate the usefulness of meeting minutes – it captures the decisions, accomplishments and next steps. Once these are put onto record, the company knows the plan of actions instead of having another meeting to discuss the same topics. The following steps show how to capture and manage meeting minutes efficiently:

1. Note taker can instantly add comments and capture important details thus improving transparency in the group
2. Track and update the information on-the-go with your colleagues to avoid email overload and keep the details up to date.
3. Assign tasks and track them on the same document in real time
4. Consolidate and format meeting notes into a document using pre-made templates.
5. Set automatic email sending to all attendees of the meeting to ensure the document is sent in a timely manner.
6. Archive meeting minutes online by their title and/or title so it’s easier to retrieve and access it when needed.

Agenda for meetings

The primary responsibility of preparing the agenda for meeting falls on the company’s manager; however, it’s often the case when it requires the contribution from other team members or departments. DocuCollab is an easy way to plan meeting agenda and ensure that company meetings are productive rather than time-wasters:

1. Create meeting agenda on a document and create a template for future; outline main points, questions to help participants plan the answers to a discussion.
2. Collaborate on the document with Chairman, Secretary or another responsible person, make the corrections and draft the final version of the agenda.
3. Set automatic tasks to send out the final copy of meeting agenda to all attendees with a specific date
4. Recap the next steps and essential points of the meeting to that ensure you, your employees or your clients are on the same page. Invite relevant parties to comment or add important notes to the document.

Responses to external correspondence

There are frequent instances when your company needs to prepare a response to request for external questions such as press, regulators or government authorities.

The information required to form the response may need inputs from many departments such as finance, HR, marketing among others. In addition, the response must be compiled reviewed and approved by appropriate authorities before sending it back.

In addition, such request for information often pertain to sensitive topics and they must be handled with utmost confidentiality and information security. In order to efficiently handle such requests on an ongoing basis, consider establishing steps covering the following:

1. Clearly identify and document people with their roles as it relates information gathering, analysis, response preparation, review and final approval
2. Monitor and grant access only to those members who are working on a project to protect sensitive information. DocuCollab is safe to use in the company as you can give access to authorized personnel and hide sensitive information
3. Collaborate with several departments at once and input the information in real-time to speed up approval process
4. Get responses approved by authority and save as templates to save time and avoid double-checking of documents
5. Ensure that email communications are appropriately referenced and archived for future audit and verification requirements.

Document management system takes the hassle out of paperwork and lets you effortlessly manage all business files. If you feel that your daily tasks need automation, transparency and more control, try DocuCollab, all-in-one document management software that was created specifically for your business needs. To see how it works, book a demo and we’d be happy to help you streamline your business.

Business image created by Peoplecreations – Freepik.com

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