What Is Document Workflow Automation: Tools & Examples

Your businesses generate a high volume of crucial documents such as invoices, contracts, and reports. Manually managing these documents can be daunting, leading to inefficiencies, errors, and security risks. According to a survey, 65% of employees face challenges when reviewing and approving documents. Additionally, a Wakefield Research report found that 54% of US professionals spend more time searching for documents than responding to emails or messages.

Therefore, document workflow automation offers solutions to these challenges by leveraging technology to streamline document-related processes. In this article, you’ll understand how document automation software works and explore some popular tools to help you manage your documents effectively.

What Is Document Workflow Automation?

Document workflow automation refers to the process of using tools and technologies to streamline and optimize the management of documents within your organization. It involves digitizing, organizing, and automating document-related tasks such as creation, editing, reviewing, approval, and distribution.

Instead of getting overwhelmed with repetitive and manual tasks, you can use document workflow solutions to create a seamless digital flow of documents. The process begins by identifying the tasks and documents that make up your workflows. You then define the rules and logic that govern how these tasks should be performed. The software handles the rest, automatically routing documents, sending notifications, and updating relevant systems. 

Importance of Document Workflow Automation

As your business handles multiple processes each day,  the volume of documents to manage also increases. Without automation, this large volume of files could lead to errors and ultimately affect your company's profitability. 

Implementing document workflow automation ensures that tasks are executed accurately and efficiently, safeguarding your organization against potential issues while maintaining data integrity.

Below are the key benefits of automating your document workflows:

Faster Document Generation

With automation tools, you can generate documents much more quickly. Using templates and automated workflows drastically reduces the time allocated to manual data entry and document creation, allowing you to focus on higher-value tasks.

Reduced Errors

Automation reduces human error, which is common in manual processes. Since many steps are automated, the chances of mistakes in data entry or document handling are significantly lowered. This helps maintain a higher level of accuracy and consistency in documentation.

Enhanced Collaboration and Communication

Workflow automation enables real-time document collaboration with features like version tracking and commenting. This improves cross-team coordination and streamlines decision-making processes.

Cost Savings

By automating document workflows, you can reduce costs associated with manual document handling, such as printing, paper storage, and labor. These cost savings can improve financial performance and lower operational costs in the long term.

Easier Compliance

Automated workflows help ensure your documentation complies with relevant regulations and standards. By maintaining a clear audit trail and ensuring that all documents are up-to-date, you can mitigate risks associated with non-compliance.

Key Components of Document Workflow Automation

Here are the critical components involved in document workflow automation:

Document Capture and Digitization

The first step in document workflow automation involves transforming physical documents into digital formats, such as PDFs. This process ensures that all documents are stored electronically, simplifying access and reducing the reliance on paper-based documentation.

Intelligent Data Extraction

Once documents are digitized, intelligent data extraction techniques are used to identify and extract relevant information. This goes beyond simple OCR, utilizing machine learning algorithms to interpret the context and meaning of the data. Intelligent extraction helps you pull out key fields like customer names, invoice numbers, order details, etc.

To simplify the process of extracting data from documents or flat files, you can leverage data extraction tools like Airbyte. It enables you to easily extract structured or raw text from documents stored in various cloud storage platforms, such as S3, Azure Blob Storage, and Google Drive.

Automated Routing and Approvals

Documents are then automatically routed to relevant stakeholders for approval based on established workflow parameters. This routing can be sequential or parallel, ensuring that each document reaches the appropriate individual or department without unnecessary delays.

User Roles and Permissions

Defining user roles and permissions ensures that only authorized personnel can access specific documents or perform certain actions within the workflow. This component enhances security and compliance by controlling who can view, edit, or approve documents throughout the process.

Integration with Existing Systems

Document workflow software empowers you to integrate with your organization's existing systems like enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), or other core business systems. This enables seamless data flow between systems and ensures consistency.

Reporting and Analytics

Document workflow solutions often provide reporting and analytics capabilities, allowing you to monitor workflow status and identify bottlenecks. You can track metrics such as document processing times, approval rates, and user activity to gather insights for process improvement.

How to Automate Document Workflows?

To effectively automate document workflows, you can follow a structured approach that enhances efficiency and minimizes errors. Here is a step-by-step breakdown to help you through the process.

Assessing Current Processes

The first step is to examine your current document workflows closely. Start by mapping out how documents flow through your organization from creation to completion. You should find the manual tasks involved in handling documents and determine where automation can improve efficiency. 

Additionally, factors like the volume of documents, the number of approvals required, and the time it takes to complete each task should be considered. Identifying these areas will help you prioritize which workflows to tackle first.

Choosing the Right Tool

Once you clearly understand your current workflows, the next step is to select an appropriate workflow documentation software. Opt for a solution that provides an intuitive interface, enabling you to design and manage workflows easily without requiring extensive technical expertise.

Evaluate features that match your requirements, like ease of integration with your existing systems, security, and scalability. It is advisable to compare different options through demos and free trials. Ideally, you should select a tool that meets your current needs and has the flexibility to grow with your business.

Design the Workflow

Create a visual representation of the workflow, detailing each step from document creation to approval and storage. This involves defining the sequence of steps, assigning roles and responsibilities, setting up triggers for automated actions, and establishing approval mechanisms.

For example, when a new document is uploaded, the system might automatically route it to the appropriate members for review and approval based on predefined rules. This ensures that the workflow operates smoothly and efficiently.

Deploy and Scale

After designing and testing your workflows, deploy the document workflow software. This involves integrating the tool with your existing systems, training your team on the new processes, and monitoring the performance. 

Once the new workflow runs smoothly, you can look at scaling it across different departments or additional processes within your organization.

Common Use Cases For Document Workflow Automation

Let's explore some use cases for document workflow automation to understand its diverse applications and benefits.

Invoice Processing

You may often find yourself overwhelmed with many invoices that need to be reviewed, approved, and processed promptly in your business operations. By leveraging document workflow solutions, you can streamline this process by automatically capturing, routing, and tracking invoices through predefined workflows. 

This not only speeds up the approval process but also minimizes the risk of errors that can occur with manual entry. Therefore, you can ensure timely payments and better cash flow management.

Contract Management

You likely deal with a large number of contracts on a regular basis like employment agreements, vendor contracts, or client service level agreements. Managing these contracts can be a challenging and error-prone process, especially if you're relying on manual, paper-based workflows.

To streamline this, you can set up automated workflows to generate contract templates based on predefined parameters, such as contract type, client information, and pricing details. You can then route the contract through the necessary approval processes, ensuring that all stakeholders review and sign off on the document before it's finalized.

Employee Onboarding

When new employees are hired, they typically need to provide various documents such as identification proof, tax forms, and previous employment records. With workflow automation, these documents can be securely uploaded and routed through a predefined process. 

The system can automatically verify the documents, flag any issues, and notify the appropriate personnel. This enhances the new hire experience, reduces HR's administrative burden, and confirms that all necessary documents are collected and processed efficiently.

Customer Onboarding

Customer onboarding can often involve multiple steps, each requiring specific documentation. When a new customer signs up for your services, you can automate the collection and verification of necessary documents and information. 

This might include contracts, payment details, and compliance documents. By streamlining the onboarding process, you can provide a smoother experience for your customers, ensuring they receive timely communication and support as they use your services. 

Marketing & Sales Collaterals

Marketing and sales teams rely heavily on various collaterals, such as brochures, presentations, proposals, and case studies. These documents must be created and distributed efficiently to ensure consistency and brand messaging.

Through automation, tasks such as content creation, design reviews, and final approvals can be efficiently managed, reducing manual errors and saving time. Automated workflows can guarantee that the right stakeholders are involved at each stage, leading to faster turnaround times and improved collaboration.

Regulatory Compliance

By automating document workflows, you can create standardized procedures for handling sensitive information, tracking document versions, and enforcing access controls. This helps in maintaining data integrity and confidentiality, which are crucial aspects of regulatory compliance. 

Additionally, automation can provide audit trails and logs for all document-related activities, facilitating transparency and accountability. This helps you meet regulatory requirements and reduces the risk of fines and penalties.

5 Document Workflow Automation Software

Let’s explore the top five document workflow automation solutions in detail, along with the key features:

DocuWare

DocuWare is a cloud-based document workflow automation tool that helps you streamline your processes and increase efficiency. With DocuWare, you can automate repetitive tasks, eliminate manual data entry, and ensure that important documents are always accessible.

Key Features

Here are the key features of DocuWare:

• Intelligent Indexing: DocuWare Intelligent Indexing capability quickly recognizes the most important data on a document and converts it into well-structured, usable information. It utilizes machine learning to automatically identify and extract crucial data from different document formats, such as scanned paper, PDFs, and others.
• Mobile Access: With DocuWare, you can access your documents and workflows from anywhere, using any device. The mobile app enables you to view, edit, and approve documents on the go, ensuring that you always have the information you need at your fingertips.
• iPaaS Connectors: DocuWare iPaaS Connectors allow you to connect DocuWare Cloud to over 1,000 other cloud applications easily, facilitating seamless data exchange and automated workflows across multiple systems.

PandaDoc

PandaDoc is a robust document automation platform that streamlines your document creation, approval, and management processes. With access to over 750 professionally designed templates, you can effortlessly customize documents to align with your brand's distinct style.

Key Features

Here are the key features of PandaDoc:

• Document Tracking: PandaDoc's document tracking feature allows you to manage and monitor your documents effectively. It provides detailed analytics on document interactions, such as tracking who has accessed the document and the duration of their viewing. Additionally, it allows you to set up automatic notifications to stay updated when a recipient takes action on the document.
• Predefined Filters: You can use predefined filters and search to quickly find documents without browsing through multiple folders. This feature empowers you to filter documents based on various criteria, such as expiration dates and statuses (e.g., for approval, paid, etc.), making it easier to prioritize urgent tasks and streamline workflows.
• Seamless Integrations: PandaDoc offers embedded integrations with popular tools like Hubspot, Pipedrive, and Salesforce. This lets you easily import customer data into your docs without switching between multiple systems.

Fluix

Fluix is a workflow automation software that helps streamline your business processes by digitizing documents and enabling real-time collaboration. It allows you to create custom digital forms, collect e-signatures, and track document status, thus improving overall efficiency and productivity.

Key Features

Here are the key features of Fluix:

• Reporting and Analytics: Fluix provides reporting and analytics capabilities to help you gain insights into your document-related processes. To optimize your operations, you can generate custom reports for tracking metrics like approval times, document versions, and user activity.
• Secure Access Control: The platform enables you to set up role-based permissions to safeguard your data. You can grant specific access to forms and tasks for individual users and teams, depending on their roles and responsibilities.
• Bulk Signing: Fluix offers a bulk signing feature to simplify the process of obtaining signatures from multiple recipients on a single document. This eliminates the need for individual emails or physical copies, allowing for a more organized and efficient signing process.

Docsumo

Docsumo is a document AI platform that can help you automate and streamline your data extraction and document processing workflows. With Docsumo, you can quickly ingest, classify, and extract critical data from unstructured documents such as invoices, bank statements, contracts, etc.

Key Features

Here are the key features of Docsumo:

• Auto Splitting: Docsumo's Auto-Split feature allows you to automatically split combined or multi-page documents into individual pages based on specified criteria. This helps streamline your workflows by ensuring that only relevant pages are processed, which saves time and reduces costs.  
• Validation Checks: It enables you to create custom rules using simple Excel-like formulas. These formulas can validate extracted data across multiple documents to ensure accuracy.
• Custom AI Models: Docsumo's Custom AI Models feature empowers you to create tailored document processing models that adapt specifically to your unique data extraction needs. You can train these models with just 20 document samples, achieving over 90% accuracy in data extraction without requiring any data science expertise.

ClickUp

ClickUp is a comprehensive document management software that helps you streamline your document-related workflows. It allows you to create and edit various documents, including wikis, knowledge bases, project briefs, etc. ClickUp Docs offers rich formatting options, enabling you to structure your documents with headings, tables, code blocks, and other visual elements.

Key Features

Here are the key features of ClickUp:

• AI Knowledge Manager: This feature allows you to ask questions and receive instant, context-aware insights from your documents. By tapping into the collective knowledge within your organization, the AI Knowledge Manager can provide you with the information you need without the hassle of searching through multiple sources.
• Document Automation: ClickUp's automation features enable you to streamline various document-related tasks, such as automatically generating documents based on templates, triggering approvals, or updating document statuses based on predefined conditions.
• Document Widgets: You can embed various widgets, such as task lists, calendars, and Gantt charts, directly into your documents to provide additional context and functionality.

How to Choose the Right Document Workflow Automation Software?

To choose the right automated workflow documentation software, you need to consider several key factors to ensure it meets your specific business needs. Here are a few of them to help you navigate this process effectively.

Understand Your Business Requirements

Before you start exploring software options, it's crucial to first assess your organization's specific requirements. You should identify the types of documents you handle, the approval processes involved, and the workflows that require automation. This will help you narrow down the options and find a solution that aligns with your objectives.

Consider Scalability

As your business grows, your document workflow automation needs may change. Choose a solution that can scale with your organization, allowing you to add more users, processes, and functionality as required. 

Assess Integration Capabilities

Your workflow documentation software should seamlessly integrate with your current systems, such as ERP, CRM, and other business applications. This ensures data flows smoothly across platforms, minimizing errors and enhancing productivity.

Focus on Ease of Use

The document workflow automation software should be intuitive so that you can quickly adapt without extensive training. Comprehensive user interfaces and easily accessible support resources could make the transition smoother and more efficient for everyone involved.

Check for Customization Options

Every business has unique processes and requirements. Look for software that offers customization options to tailor workflows to your needs. This could involve creating custom templates, setting unique approval pathways, or configuring notifications and alerts according to your preferences.

Evaluate Security Features

Data security is vital when dealing with sensitive documents. Ensure that the document workflow software you choose includes robust security measures, such as encryption, role-based access controls, and compliance with relevant regulations. This will help protect your organization's data and maintain client trust.

Leverage Airbyte to Enhance Document Workflow Automation

Airbyte is a robust cloud-based data integration platform that facilitates seamless data extraction from various sources. With over 350 pre-built connectors, Airbyte allows you to efficiently extract structured as well as unstructured data and load it into a search database like Pinecone and Weaviate.

It allows you to extract text from various document formats, such as PDFs, Word, PowerPoint, and Google Docs, just as easily as you would extract structured data stored in Avro file format or CSV.  

Rather than extracting tabular data with various columns as separate fields, Airbyte extracts the document's text content and emits it as a markdown. This retains structural information like headings or lists from the original document. From here, the content can be loaded into any destination system for downstream processing.

Here are the key features of Airbyte:

• CDK: If you can't find the connector you need from the pre-existing list, you can utilize Airbyte's Connector Development Kit (CDK) to create a custom one within 30 minutes. This enables you to effortlessly build a pipeline with your desired sources.
• Support for Vector Databases: Airbyte supports various vector database destinations, including Pinecone, Milvus, and Weaviate. This empowers you to store and query high-dimensional vector data, which is crucial for powering AI applications.
• Change Data Capture: Airbyte's CDC capabilities enable you to capture and replicate incremental changes in your data systems. Any updates made to the source data are accurately reflected in the target system, maintaining data consistency.
• Gen AI Workflows: Airbyte's integrations with data warehouses like Snowflake Cortex and BigQuery's Vertex AI empower your Gen AI applications by providing direct access to vector data. This allows you to leverage the power of large language models (LLMs) and other AI technologies to extract insights and build intelligent applications.
• Data Orchestration: Airbyte enables you to orchestrate your data pipelines using various tools, such as Airflow, Dagster, Prefect, and Kestra. This integration helps you manage complex workflows and streamline data processes effectively. 
• Data Security: It prioritizes data security by adhering to industry-standard regulations such as CCPA, GDPR, SOC2 certifications, and HIPAA. Airbyte implements robust encryption techniques and role-based access control to protect your data from potential breaches.

Conclusion

Document workflow automation is critical to streamlining business operations, improving efficiency, and ensuring compliance. By digitizing and automating document-centric processes, you can save time, reduce errors, and enhance collaboration across teams.

This article offered a comprehensive overview of document workflow automation and its key benefits. You have also explored popular document workflow solutions such as DocuWare, PandaDoc, Fluix, etc. Furthermore, you have examined the critical factors in choosing the best document workflow automation software that aligns with your needs. 

FAQs

Who would need document automation workflows?

Document automation workflows are essential for professionals and businesses that frequently deal with a high volume of documents, such as legal firms, real estate agencies, healthcare, and financial institutions.

How does document automation work?

Document automation uses software to automate the creation, management, and distribution of documents. This can involve templates, data extraction, document generation, and workflow integration to streamline document-heavy processes.

What are the problems that document workflow automation solves?

Document workflow automation addresses issues such as time-consuming manual processes, high error rates, compliance risks, and difficulties in document retrieval. It improves productivity and enhances the overall document management experience.