The exchange of information is the basis of the existence of our today’s society as well as the fundamentals of business relationships. One of the major forms of the information exchange in a business world are formal documents including invoices, contracts, rules, business values and more. All these documents help companies to keep track of all important information between departments and all this process is called the document flow.
The globalization of the economy and digital transformation inevitably leads to the expansion of document management and its qualitative complication. That’s why improving the efficiency of document management is one of the most important tasks of computer science. The only way to cope with this task is the automation of working with documents and the use of cloud computing and computer technology.
Why document automation is important
There are several reasons why companies invest in digital transformation and why refactoring code is important for document management and automation systems. Among common reasons, let’s focus on two: cost saving and accessibility.
- Cost saving
One of the major driver and the key factor of an interest in document automation is the ability to save lots of expenses with only switching from paper to digital copies. We can only imagine how much time and money the bank saves by cutting all the paper purchases, printing forms and contracts, sending all the documents via post office and storing all these files at the safe place. For example the cloud-based document management software built for one of the largest investment banks in the UK saves more than 400 k pound per year.
- Accessibility
The second and not the least important reason is the document accessibility of any time and at any location. When the businesses started adopting cloud migration strategies and using online storage for documents – the one copy of a document became accessible for lots of people with the access to it in a second. All of that made lot’s of business deals possible.
Document automation, how its started
The document management mechanism has several stages. The first stage is to create a document. Then – its transportation (transfer), orderly storage and reproduction (or other use).
Not all these stages of document management are automated equally easily.
The easiest approach to document automation is the reproduction of documents, which is the final stage of the document flow.. Historically, this final stage was automated earlier than others. This happened in the early 80’s of XX century, when the introduction of printing devices that connect to personal computers.
Later, in 1980’s, the automation of document storage and access control began. The main means of automation at this stage were the early database management systems and file storage systems of the personal computers.
A big step in document automation and transportation was made in the 90s, when the main means of automation became network-based computer services. The rize of computer networks together with the data exchange services revolutionized document automation. Since then, it has become possible to use the network to move documents and centrally monitor the progress of the paperwork.
At the same time, new problem have appeared, such as the legal regime of the electronic copy of the document. There is a technical solution to this problem: any data provided in electronic form can be encrypted and provided with an electronic digital signature.
The digital signature is a special code that eliminates doubts about the authorship and correctness of the content of the transmitted document. A necessary condition for the transition to document automation is the granting of legal status of the electronic copies.
The most difficult part in electronic document management is to automate the processes of the initial stage of document flow – the creation of documents. They are far from final automation to this day. The reason is simple. The greater the creative component of a process, the more difficult it is to automate. At the same time, the more complex the information process, the higher the efficiency of its automation, even if partial.
The process of document automation when creating a copy is based on the use of styles for the design of some fragments of documents and document templates. And it is possible to use both standard styles and templates, and create new ones.
The availability of technological base for the development of office automation systems has contributed to the development of some original information technologies for working with documents, the nature of which is due to the need to provide the user with the usual attributes of traditional office work.