Document Control Automation

Hey!

I would like to know your opinion about something. It’s about document control systems used commonly in enterprises for process quality.

How effective are software based quality control systems to automate the workflow?

I have read in articles about Automating Document Control, that they can improve the efficiency and ease the document creation and management process.

Are they good enough to do exactly what they are supposed to do or is it just another thing that will make us go digital just for the sake of it?

The reason I am having this concern is that, many technology that are supposed to help process easier for us, aren't doing that any better than the manual process. In fact, in many cases, manual processes are way better.

So what’s your opinion on this?

I've used QPulse in the past and I'm sure it's moved on in the last few years but the document control section wasn't really any better than an offline log.  The only thing which made it better was it automatically reminded me when a review date was due.  Blimey that was annoying though because I'd set up a new site and each document review was set for 1 year.  Naturally I assumed a lot of my documents wouldn't be right first time and would naturally get reviewed throughout the year meaning the annual review date would get changed.  Duh.  Nope.  I probably had 10 documents which kept changing, the rest annoyingly started pinging into my email inbox a year later, en masse.  You can switch off the alert though.

I'd be interested to see if anyone is doing this well nowadays.

If you take the time to set up the system correctly, then I have found it to be a real help.  If not, then it is typically a hindrance.  As the saying goes, "garbage in is garbage out". 

If you already have a well thought out working document control system, then you probably won't see much benefit.  However, if you are starting from scratch then these systems typically have built in bonuses like archiving, current document list including revision, review reminders, approvals, revision log, etc.