An enterprise content management system (ECM) like Laserfiche can help prevent compliance-related headaches. For instance, tools like Laserfiche’s Workflow enable quick, straightforward confirmation that employees follow company policies while reducing their time on repetitive routine tasks. While implementing Laserfiche will take you far down the line of compliance, here are some other best practices to consider.
Today, digitization’s compliance support capabilities are even more critical, with many employees working remotely. For example, team members may email documents back and forth to each other, compromising security and making losing track of the final version more likely.
Get rid of manual processes
Organizations can transform processes by ending reliance on paper, unstructured electronic files, or Excel spreadsheets for keeping track of and storing compliance-related documents. We all know that many highly regulated organizations have a secret spreadsheet. Business processes that rely on these error-prone methods, like rekeying information into the aforementioned spreadsheet, especially if multiple employees do it, are risky.
Even if all participants do their best to maintain accuracy, errors are bound to occur. You can quickly fail compliance if you don’t catch those errors in time. ECM provides intelligent indexing that automatically identifies the most valuable information in a document and converts it into highly structured, usable index data.
In a practical example, a medical device manufacturer used a manual process that involved printing out an Excel spreadsheet for a staff member who checked off each document after they reviewed it. Now, the organization uses an automated regulatory compliance workflow that stamps the document with the reviewer's date, time, and name to verify it has been reviewed and approved. Electronic processes like this reduce errors significantly and prove that the required review has been completed.
Cloud
Advanced security and disaster recovery planning are vital pillars of a compliance strategy. Cloud platforms set up clear security and privacy requirements and consistently meet them. These platforms supply state-of-the-art documents and internet communication encryption, protecting cloud services against protocol downgrade attacks, malware, and other cyber threats. They also provide secure backup by mirroring data in offsite data centers. Moving your on-premise ECM to the cloud guarantees your organization meets compliance standards while reducing the stress on internal IT resources.
Manage the lifecycle
Each document category often has a different retention schedule; manual approaches are labor-intensive and error-prone. Your company needs a plan, and a document management system simplifies its execution. An ECM manages retention schedules with automatic deletion or an email notification sent to a staff member before deletion. Automation, based on your business rules, makes keeping your company compliant with Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, GDPR, FINRA, FERPA, and other federal and state regulations much more straightforward.
While organizations may be fined for not keeping information for a set time, holding documents beyond their required retention period also puts companies at risk for security breaches, non-compliance with privacy regulations, or having to give old documents as a part of a discovery request.
Overall, An ECM system supplies a single, authorized platform for collaboration and enforces company policies consistently without human intervention. The ECM provides the technology part of the people, processes, and technology framework. All three pillars are critical.
Comentários