Documents are still essential for modern business. From contracts to invoices and financial agreements, the creation, sharing, and storing of documents is vital for millions of organizations to function.
But is the way we work with documents as efficient as it could be? Research from Slack State of Work 2023 shows that 71% of business leaders are trying to find ways for their teams to be more productive. Drilling down further into the same research, only 36% of sales teams reported as using automation in their processes. The easiest place to start is with the documents you could automate, like invoices, contracts, proposals, and quotes — giving your sales teams hours each week they could then use to focus on selling.
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5 ways document automation helps you
Document workflow software is designed to save organizations time and money. Here are just some of the ways it can help:
- Avoid repetitive and manual work
The Salesforce 5th Edition of the State of Sales from 2023, reports that salespeople spend up to 25% of their work hours building documents such as quotes, contracts and more — adding in data, checking them for mistakes, and sending them. But with document workflow software, this process becomes much faster. A click of a button in Salesforce lets employees simply open a template, add or remove pre-approved paragraphs, add specific context and information, and then save the document. Instead of starting from a blank screen and having to refer back to data in Salesforce, they can instead use a ready-to-go template and input from fields as needed. With the click of a few buttons, you can now generate a professional document in minutes rather than hours.Case study: Yamaha uses document workflow automation for major time savings
- Minimize mistakes
Contracts and proposals can run to tens or even hundreds of pages. Instead of routinely building from nothing, often people recreate these documents by copying and pasting content from earlier files. There is always a risk of mistakes and incorrect information entering a document, or not being removed. But, if you use document automation, employees can be confident that all the data held in a template is approved and ready to go. - Diminish process disruption
Let’s be honest, getting a document approved in today’s business environment can take an incredible amount of time and people. What happens if one of the people in the process leaves? Even if you have document automation, what happens if the one person who knows how to build the templates in SOQL retires or leaves? Having a document automation process — and document generation solution — keeps the individual documents going through the system. Having an easy-to-use document generation system ensures most people can step in to keep the processes going without finding specific skills and knowledge. - Ensure compliance
Most business documentation today must comply with at least some form of regulation — be it compliance with legal standards or personal data collection rules. However, if your staff are manually creating documents, then there’s a risk that the files they create may not be stored correctly or collect information in the wrong way — which could lead to serious repercussions. Once again, using document workflow software means you can be confident that all your templates will be compliant with rules and regulations. - Focus employees on higher-value work
Perhaps one of the greatest benefits of document workflow automation is that it saves your employees hours of work each day manually creating documents. The Slack State of Work report states that 90% of workers who feel more productive are more confident in their ability to hit their goals. This means they can dedicate time to more high-value activities, hitting the KPIs that are meaningful to their role, and ultimately growing your business.
Get started with document workflow automation
Nintex DocGen® for Salesforce (formerly Drawloop) is our market-leading tool that helps businesses rapidly generate critical documents such as contracts, work orders, invoices and much more, and ensures they include all the correct information. Once created, files enter your document management workflow – for approval, digital signatures, and secure storage.
