By Hans Downer, President & CEO, SavvyDox In the grand scheme of things, document collaboration is a mundane, time-consuming process that normally doesn’t get much attention since executives normally don’t get heavily involved in the process, nor do they understand the magnitude of the impact on their organization. However, taking the approach of ignoring a mundane, time-consuming process could have a big negative impact on your career. Document collaboration goes well beyond just sharing a file and letting everyone modify the file in real time. Think of one of the most effective methods of collaboration today — a face to face meeting or video conference. There are a few key points that make those reviews more effective than the way document collaboration is managed today.
First, everyone is looking at the same version of the document — the slides being shown by the presenter. Second, it is a true parallel review in which everyone can hear everyone else’s comments and understand their point of view. Third, the format supports threaded comments since, if someone objects to someone else’s comments, they can state their opinion which everyone else can then interpret in their own manner. Fourth, the presenter hears everyone’s comments and understands the group viewpoint, and only the presenter can change the slide contents. Let’s Compare That Process To Some Of The Options Available Today The most common method of collaboration on a document uses an attachment to an email. Almost everyone receives at least a hundred emails every day — what if your email gets lost in someone’s inbox? What if someone shares the content of your email with the press or a competitor?
Email review is a serial review process in which none of the reviewers see anyone else’s comments until the author puts them all together in a modified document — there is really no opportunity for discussion. If you happen to be the author of the original document, you receive multiple emails in response, and you have to figure out how to cut and paste from those documents into your source document which is time consuming and painful. As the author, you inevitably receive a change from someone based on the incorrect version of the document under review — how do you handle that? What happens if two people have opposing views on a change — how do you sort it out?
After two or three rounds of revisions, the document tends to resemble a Christmas tree with multiple colored changes and cross outs compliments of Word Track Changes. How do you read the document with all those multi-colors? After two or three rounds of reviews, one of the reviewers suggests a change in fairly complex wording that is a different style of wording than used by the original author. Since no one can easily read the document anymore, it is very difficult to determine if the change is appropriate. What if a simple change in writing style introduces a loophole in a contract that isn’t picked up?
In short, email reviews are a frustrating and time consuming process — there has to be a better way. Enter method two of collaboration. A file is shared among multiple reviewers and everyone in parallel can modify the document.
If four or five people change the same word or phrase, the underlying system will normally only keep the last change. If you are the author or owner of the document, you will probably only see the last change — what if it is wrong and you didn’t even know there were other options to consider? What if one of the reviewers inserts a change and has the ability to accept that change in the document? The author or owner of the document may not even know that a change was inserted — is that acceptable? While this is not intuitively obvious, everyone is normally reviewing a Word document and they can save it on their device.
Once it is on their device, it can easily be sent to the press or a competitor without the author even knowing until it is too late. To date, those were the two primary methods of collaborating on documents. Numerous problems exist with each option and when an error does occur in a contract, it can be enormous. When a document leak is discovered, it is normally too late. There are numerous examples of problems with document collaboration resulting in multi-million dollar errors and everyone has seen the impact of leaked documents.
Do you want to risk your career on something that can be easily and inexpensively addressed in a matter of days? New tools are now available (including SavvyDox) that provide the equivalent benefits to a face to face meeting and prevent document leaks. Why not take a few minutes and check them out? It could save your career.
Savvydox Collaborative Document Review Software
Almost every vendor who has a solution for document management claims that they provide document collaboration, however, if you dig a bit beneath the surface, you’ll find that there are several different types of document collaboration. Is your business willing to take the risks associated with many of those document management solutions? What is the impact if the press or your competitors obtain a copy of a document identifying a new business opportunity, detailed competitive analysis, or new pricing? The Enterprise File Sync and Share (EFSS) and Enterprise Content Management (ECM) vendors have some tremendously valuable features, but in general only provide the capability to share documents for collaboration. What someone does with the document once they have it is their problem/opportunity. Here are some of the risks associated with that approach:. The reviewer can store a copy of the Word document on their device – once that happens, it can no longer be revoked AND they can send it to whomever they wish.
That poses a significant risk of a disgruntled employee leaking a document or someone unintentionally forwarding confidential information. In some cases the solution only supports a serial review where the document must be checked out and then checked in. Those users miss all the benefits of a parallel review like you experience in a face to face meeting and the document author could wind up with incorrect information in their document if reviewer 3 or 4 adds wrong data and person 1 who is the expert has already finished their review of the document. A serial review takes longer to complete than a parallel review and what happens if a person early in the serial review workflow is on vacation for 2 weeks? Can your business afford to risk that delay in today’s competitive market?. In some cases the solution supports a parallel review where everyone has the opportunity to change the content of the document. That provides the benefits of a parallel review, but the document author must check all the changes carefully to make sure they are correct and what if the author misses one and it’s wrong?
What if four people change one specific word? The author probably only sees the last change and doesn’t even know there were three others – what if one of those other 3 was the correct change?
Can your business (or you) afford the risk of incorrect information being published? Google Docs and SharePoint provide parallel review capabilities, but suffer the security vulnerabilities of point #1 and are hindered by the problems associated with point #3. What if you just circulated a document in Microsoft Word via email which is what happens with most contracts. That suffers the security vulnerability of point #1 and even magnifies the problems associated with point #2 since none of the reviewers have ANY visibility to what the other reviewers are suggesting. What happens if someone slips in a change that Word Track Changes didn’t pick up? Here is a real world example of what happens when two large multinationals worked on a contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars – the press conference was scheduled, the EVP was sitting at the desk for the conference and literally 15 minutes before the press conference, the lawyers came running in saying “don’t sign that, they inserted some changes that we didn’t see”.
Some EFSS vendors still suffer from version control issues and circulating Word documents in emails definitely suffers from version control problems. Here is a real world example of what happens when version control issues are encountered – two legal firms were finalizing a $100 Million contract and sent what they thought was the latest version to their clients for signature.
As it turned out, both legal teams sent the wrong version of the document to their clients for signature and both clients, trusting their legal advisors, signed the incorrect version of the contract! Fortunately, the companies were friendly enough to correct the error, but do you think they every used those legal firms again? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a solution that eliminated the business risk associated with leaked documents? Wouldn’t it be great to collaborate in a document review process that provided the same impact as a face to face meeting – a parallel review where everyone could see everyone else’s comments, everyone could comment on everyone else’s comments, and the author of the document retained control of the contents of the document? Wouldn’t it be fantastic to finally eliminate the business risk of version control problems?
Wouldn’t it relieve a huge amount of stress for the document owner if they knew that nobody could change the content of their document without the document owner clicking with their mouse to accept a suggested change? Wouldn’t the document owner feel much better about the collaboration if they saw ALL the suggested changes and they could choose which one to use rather than the system just picking the last one? Wouldn’t all those benefits significantly reduce your business risk? Isn’t that risk reduction worth $15 per month for each of your employees if you have under 100 users?
As the volume of users grows, the cost per user comes down. That solution exists today and it is called SavvyDox.
SavvyDox doesn’t replace your ECM or EFSS, it provides a complementary easy to use intuitive front end solution for collaborative document review that can be integrated with your ECM or EFSS. You can still enjoy all the benefits of your ECM or EFSS and tighten the security around your collaborative document review process. Integrations into a Single Sign On solution, Active Directory and OpenText have been developed to provide a seamless implementation for two departments within the Government of Canada. Other integrations can be developed using SavvyDox’ REST based API to address other unique business environments. Why not go to the and check out the, watch a few short videos in the, and for a no charge trial. Remember that you need two or more people collaborating on a document to experience the benefits, so ask a co-worker to join you in the test. If you’re using an ECM, an EFSS, or especially Word and email, you will be able to experience reduced business risk from document leaks, reduce costs as a result of productivity improvements for both document authors and document reviewers, improve document turnaround time as a result of an author controlled parallel review process and create better quality documents by introducing SavvyDox into your workflow.
Savvydox Collaborative Document Reviews
If you’re not using an ECM or EFSS, SavvyDox can also provide those same benefits while serving as a lightweight document repository. In short, reduce your overall business risk at a very affordable price with SavvyDox.