The modern business world is incredibly data-driven. Whether you’re a multi-national corporation or an SME, you have data that needs to be organized, stored, and kept safe. Being so reliant on information means that we all have a ton of documents that need to be managed and controlled. When it comes to dealing with documents, there’s a lot of confusion regarding document control vs document management.

People often use these terms interchangeably. However, there’s a pretty huge difference between document control and document management. In this article, we are going to take on the “document control vs document management” challenge and highlight the difference between these two terms. So, without further ado, let’s dive into it.

Document Control vs Document Management

Like we mentioned just now, document control and document management are two different aspects of maintaining your documents. Let’s see how!

Document Control:

Document control refers to the security and credibility aspects of maintaining your documents. When someone talks about document control, they’re referring to processes that involve keeping tabs on the current and previous versions of your documents. The document control process involves:

• Maintaining document security
• Document version control
• Reviewing documents
• Developing and maintaining an approval process
• Regulating document submission

All of this helps businesses maintain a record of which documents they have used in their past and who has had access to them. A controlled document is secure since you have a record of its version history and a record of who has ever made changes to the said documents.

Controlled documents are also less likely to be misused or submitted with errors since there’s a rigorous approval process in place.

Document control is all about maintaining a digital paper trail. Nowadays, document control is essential for businesses of all shapes and sizes for various reasons. However, it’s not as difficult as it sounds. Thanks to document handling systems, maintaining a controlled document collection has become really easy. These systems not only automate your document handling but also keep track of all your essential documents and too with minimum effort.

Document Management:

In the document control vs document management debate, the latter is a more generic term. However, this does not mean it holds less importance. Document management refers to processes that involve digitizing paper documents, storing, validating, indexing, and updating them.

A controlled document is a managed document, but not every managed document is a controlled document. Simply put, document control is one of the aspects of document management that assures the security of the documents.

Document management has become an essential part of modern-day businesses. This is because every business focuses on digitizing their paper documents and maintaining a system for all future documents. Fortunately, document management has become relatively easy nowadays because of document handling systems. These systems provide businesses with a suite of tools that make managing and controlling documents really easy.

You can learn more about how document handling systems make document management easier from our guide on document management.

Document Control vs Document Management: Which is more Important?

When people get into the document control vs document management argument, we’re left bickering about which process is more important. The truth is that both processes are equally important and inter-connected. You cannot have a controlled document without practicing document management.

Document management is a holistic process, one that involves several processes revolving around document recording, tracking, updating, and security. In fact, document management has become quite feasible for smaller businesses as well. This is thanks to document handling systems that provide SMEs and large businesses with the tools they need to keep their documents in order.

If you’re looking to streamline your document management, feel free to contact us. We offer top-notch document handling services that can help you manage your business’ information in a better and more efficient way. We use the best document handling systems, and we can even train your team so that your business runs smoothly.