Whether you’re looking to create a sales pitch, develop a project plan, finalize a new contract, or design a staff training program, documents – both digital and paper-based – are an inseparable part of your organization’s DNA.
And where there are documents, there’s the potential for:
- Confusion – stemming from poor version control, the inadequate collaboration between multiple parties, processing of redundancies, and bottlenecks
- Information loss – due to human error or carelessness
- Data breaches – resulting from inadequate encryption mechanisms or poor document composition workflows.
The last point has the potential to be an especially serious problem. Research indicates that over 60% of the Fortune 1000 have suffered at least one public breach over the last decade. Moreover, exposure of just 1,000 records has a 6% chance of causing financial losses exceeding $10 million, while a breach of 100 million records increases this probability to over 50%. Apart from the financial repercussions, document-related issues can cause costly legal/regulatory compliance violations, and impact a firm’s reputation.
Documents also play a significant role in customer relationship management and in maintaining the quality of customer experiences (CX). However, the many “moving parts” of the document composition workflow – data, design, copy, tone, branding consistency, delivery mechanisms, personalization level, etc. – can affect the communication pipeline between you and your customers. Imagine you misspell a customer’s name in a document, forget to use the latest version of an important contract, publish an outdated product list, or send out expired offers. All these mistakes can directly impact CX, which can tarnish your corporation’s image.
For all these reasons, it’s imperative to manage your organization’s document composition governance with air-tight protocols and workflows.
Strategies to Enhance Document Composition Governance
Try the strategies given below to take control of your document environment and deliver cost-effective, consistent CX. None of these ideas rely on employees to safeguard data, maintain branding consistency, or ensure compliance. People will always be careless and error-prone, so it’s more important to establish secure governance workflows: to control metadata, enhance collaboration, improve document security, and ultimately, deliver excellent CX.
i) Create a document composition governance plan and framework
First, decide how you will create, store, and manage your documents. For paper records, offsite storage is a good option. For electronic records, cloud storage, and document management systems (DMS) can provide automated tracking and indexing for easy retrieval and access control.
ii) Digitize paper documents
Converting paper documents to digital files is a good way to secure data, while also simplifying sharing and collaboration. Document capture software can read paper documents, automatically redact information, and encrypt the resulting digital files.
iii) Set authorized destinations
Set parameters for routing digital files to keep them from falling into the wrong hands due to human error (inadvertent or malicious).
iv) Use technology
Install software to enable multiple users to collaborate on documents while maintaining full version control, and to automatically remove metadata before files are shared. Deploy Customer Communication Management software (CCM) like OpenText Exstream to create, manage, deliver, and track personalized customer communications, and to make it a cornerstone of your CX strategy.
Modernizing Customer Communication Management is a powerful way to simplify your document composition governance processes and workflows. With CCM, each person in your organization is empowered to attract, engage, and delight customers, develop meaningful relationships with them and ensure consistent CX with every document and every interaction. OpenText Exstream offers a powerful yet user-friendly way to manage your document composition governance, and control all your customer communications over every channel. Many U.S. enterprises choose WayPath as their OpenText Exstream CCM implementation and service partner. To discuss your CCM project, please get in touch with us at +1-877-334-4266 or fill out the form here.
