Document Connection for "Soft Document” Transactions

Transactional soft documents vary by source, format, and function, but all require additional processing downstream. This is important to recognize to optimize ECMs that rely on automating document inputs.

Soft document inputs include documents generated by users in desktop applications (MS Office, LOB apps), routed through watch folders, and routed by email. and are typically isolated without activity by a user.

The document content that users input to systems is prone to variation, error, and inefficiency, which creates avoidable costs and hampers growth.

Regardless of how automated the initial document may be, once edited, combined, or enhanced at some point in the transactional path, these changes are often difficult to share with sales, operations, and administration.

When a previously automated document goes unrecognized, it creates an exception. Who fixes the transaction? Who decides whether to automate the document going forward?

For documents generated or received by a user in soft-document format, many recurring transactions are never recognized as a document to capture.

Transactional documents typically need to be distributed to multiple places in many different formats.

Some documents need to be retained in their original format. Other documents contain data that should be extracted and sent to transactional systems to complete different operational and administrative processes.

For recurring transactions, decisions to classify, name, route, save, print, or otherwise deliver the document or data take unnecessary time and effort and often create errors and rework.

Transactions involving soft documents create incomplete visibility to business performance; blind spots regarding progress and status.

Many transactions require business decisions and authorizations.

Capture and distribution exceptions create a backlog of unresolved transactions.

Many transactions require auditability to maintain regulatory compliance.