Qudos System 3 Guided Tour - Document management

Managing your documents

The Problems...

"We have documents located in various places on our server, and they are never easy to find when you need them fast"

"Sometimes our people are referring to obsolete versions of contractual or technical documents. This can put us at great risk - financially and otherwise"

"Many documents on our server have been there a long time...I'm sure that some of them are no longer relevant"

These are just a few of the document control issues we hear about, and one or two of them are no doubt familiar to you. The subject is quite rightly a key requirement of many compliance standards such as ISO 9001 Quality management, OHSAS 18001 / AS/NZS 4801 Occupational Health & Safety, and ISO 14001 Environment.

So how is the issue typically addressed?
The harsh reality is that many organisations do not perform this basic administrative task very well.

Some may have a word processed index, or spreadsheet, but this can get very unwieldy when there are large numbers of documents. Others rely on the default indexing in Windows Explorer - but documents are rarely all kept in one location.

Some, of course, do not take a planned approach at all, and suffer the consequences that might range from regularly wasted time in searching for documents, through to catastrophic errors and misunderstandings.

Some organisations go to the other extreme, investing huge amounts of money and resources into overly-expensive document management solutions - while virtually neglecting other key aspects of compliance and risk management.

We believe that the ideal solution in most cases is to include a sensible level of document control as part of an integrated compliance and risk management strategy.

The Solution...

Qudos System 3 has a dedicated Documents module that offers an extremely effective document registration, distribution and review process, and many would consider makes the case for the software all on its own!

The Master Document List is perhaps the most widely used component in the whole application. It displays details of each listed document, and provides a link to actual files - which have been automatically uploaded to a nominated, central location on your server. This makes it easy to find and open files created in any application. This provides greatly improved access to important documents - while easing the admin burden at a stroke. Apart from those with licenced user accounts, Qudos System 3 includes a special account for an unrestricted number of people to be given read access to your documents. For ease-of-use this key component is just a single-click away from the main screen.

Read-only controls protect the documents from unauthorised changes. A choice is offered of using your own document numbering system or our automated numbering process.

When document revisions are made, a Check-in process is followed with mandatory logging of what changed, by who, when, and why and an upload of the revised document. A Document Revision History is maintained, and auto email facilities offer Document change notification to a nominated group of people. The new version of the document is uploaded, and the previous one is automatically archived.

Document Reviews are pre-programmed into a schedule when a document is first registered. This reduces the danger of irrelevant, old documents lingering around, and is a big step towards complying with a common requirement of many standards.

Screen shot of extract from Master Document List

A sample procedure for communicating business rules on document management is included. This smart, web-style document may be quickly and easily customized to suit your needs using MS Word or equivalent.

Other useful components in the document module include a global Revisions List, and Deletions List, plus the facility to record Copy Holders of individual documents.

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