Today, documents are not just random sheets with pieces of information. In the current business landscape, documents hold great importance and a massive amount of data that facilitates a company’s strategic growth, compliance checks, financial decisions and more. More and more businesses are turning physical papers into digital documents to benefit from the numerous ways that digital documents provide in terms of cost saving, convenience, easy management, quick accessibility etc. As the usage of digital documents grows, it is important to understand the lifecycle of these digital documents.

Digital documents go through various stages in their lifecycle. Each stage has its importance and must be managed meticulously in order to make efficient use of digital documents . These stages can be automated to eliminate any human intervention that may cause delay, loss of data or inaccuracy. Data lifecycle management is a process that helps organizations manage the flow of data throughout its lifecycle.Organizations can gain from the various advantages that an effective document lifecycle management can provide, like reduced costs, full document control, increase in overall efficiency and productivity, easy retrieval etc. io While there are many stages of a digital document’s lifecycle, it can broadly be categorized into 5 stages (not every document goes through all the stages), which are as follows:

1. Document Collection- Documents reach their destination through various sources and are submitted by various stakeholders in the process. These documents could be physical or digital and needs to be collected by the stakeholder at the destination of these documents. So document collection is a phase where receiving entity collects documents (physical or digital from various stakeholders in the process). Kleeto support document collection in physical and digital form – for digital document collection kleeto has a tool called “Document Collection System” which can collect documents from multiple stakeholders and can run through a workflow management system to make documents reach its intended destination. During various stages in document collection it can get additional information attached, additional documents attached or even digitally authenticate and sign the documents.

2. Document Generation – Document generation is a phase where physical or digital documents can be generated from the raw or structured data, once documents are generated these can be verified or approved and then goes to other phase of document lifecycle. Kleeto has system which can help clients generate digital documents from predefined templates or custom templates with dynamic information filling up required details. Document Generation system can also include workflow management and approval cycles before documents move to next phase in its lifecycle.

3. Document Consumption – Document consumption is a stage where documents and / or content of documents is consumed for various tasks in business operations. E.g. invoices processes by payable system or documents consumed by ERP system or documents consumed by BGV (background verification companies) companies for background checks. Kleeto has tools and integration capabilities to ensure documents are collected or generated and then moved to right system for consumption.

4. Document Distribution- Documents once generated and / or collected may need to be sent to various stakeholders or intended audience eg. Performance appraisal letters sent to all employees, invoices sent to customers, minutes of meeting sent to teams etc. kleeto tools can combine various stages and then through workflow move documents to right people for consumption or further processing.

5. Document Archival- The last stage is document archival which means, safely storing documents for future use, for future retrieval. Most of the documents have life span defined as per government policies or company policies – these documents need to be stored for defined period before these are purged. However during storage phase documents should be indexed and tagged with sufficient details so that retrieval of documents is quick and easy for business decision depending on these documents. Documents may be needed for internal or external audits and hence easy retrieval is must for document archival. Kleeto system supports detailed indexing, sophisticated access control and easy retrieval in physical and digital form to help businesses operate smoothly.

Having clearly defined document lifecycle management processes is the key to a productive and successful organization. Kleeto provides services for documents at each stage of the lifecycle and thus is the smart choice for today’s businesses.