Document workflow and document workflow automation are key to ensuring your organization or business runs smoothly. In the analog world, creating and streamlining document workflow was tricky and caused more problems than they solved. Those problems could have ranged from lost or misplaced documents; document errors that needed to be corrected quickly; and missing documents holding up project confirmation or important business functions. But now, with PDF editors and online PDF converters, you can set up an automated document workflow that runs flawlessly. This blog will look more into what document workflow automation is and what it can do for you.
What is Document Automation?
Document automation and workflow automation are integral to streamlining PDF workflows. Document automation involves automating repetitive tasks and generating PDFs automatically. It reduces manual intervention by you or your employees, and most importantly, minimizes errors, and speeds up the creation of standardized documents, such as contracts, invoices, and reports. This means that all documents you create follow a preprogrammed path, from creation, to review and, ultimately approval.
How can you automate document workflows?
The answer is a document management program or software that comes as software that you can program and adjust to your company’s parameters. But these programs do more than just document automation. They also give you a safe, centralized location to store all your documents for future reference. Tools such as Google Workspace, and Dropbox will let you create new documents in one place, give access to multiple team members, and even let you convert PDF to other file types.
H2 – How Document Automation Improves Collaboration
Effective collaboration is something that all businesses and organizations want, and using a document automation workflow will help you reach that level of collaboration. PDF editors with collaboration features can help your teams work on a document in real time, regardless of their physical location. A program such as Lumin PDF is well-equipped to help any organization improve its collaboration. With Lumin, you can sync your company’s cloud-based drive to Lumin so every document you create and all the edits or annotations made by any team member will be saved automatically.
Different team members can also open and work on the same document through Lumin, giving you real-time collaboration. Lumin and similar programs also let you set version control. Meaning different users can set the “track changes” feature to make annotations and keep a record of all the changes made to the document. This ensures that all revisions and comments are recorded and accessible, preventing confusion and loss of information.
H2 – Implementing Document Workflow Automation
Another business function that document automation can help improve is the way projects and initiatives are greenlit. In most businesses and organizations, projects need to be approved at various levels and for various reasons, which requires careful document review and keeping track of every step the document takes. This essential function is something you can optimize with document workflow automation.
For example, you can use OCR technology to convert scanned PDFs into editable text. This allows reviewers to search, select, and copy text from the document, making the review process smoother and more accessible. Speeding up document approval is important, but if there is an error on the contract or proposal that needs to be reviewed, then you need to be able to make changes.
With an OCR scanner, you can convert a PDF into another format, such as Word or Google Docs file to make the changes. You could also use a PDF editor, such as Lumin or Adobe Acrobat to make those changes. But security is another important feature that many document workflow systems offer. With document automation, you can program the system to automatically add watermarks or other security features to all documents so there is no unauthorized copying.
H2 – Document Automation in the Long-Term
Making the switch to document automation workflows means that you’ll eliminate time-consuming tasks, ensure all your documents are properly formatted and go where they’re supposed to go. You could also use a PDF editor to improve workflows, as they can help you merge, split, and convert PDFs, while also giving you access to OCR technology. With these PDF tools and more, you can enhance your PDF workflow and achieve greater collaboration, efficiency, and automation.
