Johannesburg, 16 Mar 2016
In 2012, a survey conducted by global provider of market intelligence, International Data Corporation (IDC) found that information workers wasted a significant amount of time each week dealing with a variety of challenges related to working with documents, says Nicolette de Wit, CEO of Intuate Group.
The study estimated that this wasted time cost companies an astounding $19 000 (over R300 000) per information worker per year, and also amounted to a loss of 21.3% in an organisation's total productivity. For a business with more than 1 000 employees, the IDC observed that these costs amounted to the equivalent of hiring 213 new employees.
The survey noted that information workers were in need of tools and best practices to assist with the creation and management of documents in particular, as survey respondents were spending 11.2 hours per week dealing with related challenges.
These issues will come as no surprise to the financial services sector, an industry that generates millions of pieces of paper a day - from commercial lending agreements, LMA loan agreements, ISDA documentation, mortgage promissory notes and commercial promissory notes, to client credit documentation, guarantor signature blocks and venture capital term sheets.
Fortunately however, when it comes to the creation of documents, there are tools that can assist to alleviate these challenges, with document automation being one such solution. Also known as document assembly, document automation can help to streamline the drafting of documents with the use of an intelligent underlying template that uses segments of pre-existing text and data to "assemble" a new document.
In essence, it allows users to replace manual document handling with software, thus automating the processing of documents, improving accuracy and efficiencies while averting avoidable losses.
Automating the construction of business-critical documentation enhances compliance with internal procedure or external regulation, negates risk from human error, and saves a vast amount of time and cost when modifying frequently used documents. It is also interactive, helping to improve productivity, decrease data entries, and reducing the time spent proofreading documents.
Easy to use and flexible, the software does not require complete mastery in order to benefit from its use, and enormous value can be achieved at every level of experience.