Documentation is key in any industry, but it has become more complex in the finance industry. Documents such as industry insights, market trends, internal processes, critical information, and best practices are specialized and must be maintained accurately and efficiently.
At the same time, as your institution grows, so does the number of these documents and the immense amount of data they carry. Traditional documentation, such as patchwork of emails, Word documents, and Excel sheets, cannot be handled anymore.
So, simplifying the documentation in the finance industry is crucial to run your institution smoothly.
This article discusses how you can achieve this and the tools and tips to help you along the way. But before we get started, let’s look at the kind of issues financial institutions might face if the documentation remains messy.
Challenges Faced Due To Complex Documentation Processes In The Finance Industry
Increased Time and Resource Consumption
If the documentation is not automated, different stakeholders, such as customer service associates, financial advisors, and back office teams, will be involved in manually sorting, filing, managing, and even delivering financial documents.
This means that instead of investing their time in profit-generating activities like upselling or PR, they will be spending time on operational issues. This is a clear waste of valuable resources and inefficiency regarding a smooth documentation process.
Risk of Errors and Inconsistencies
An increasing volume of data in the financial sector increases the chance of errors and failure in record-keeping. It can be difficult for teams to keep track of the overwhelming amount of documents, resulting in errors and discrepancies.
A financial institution can have different types of important documents including blueprints, technical documentation, and process documentation. Losing version control because of traditional documentation can negatively affect the tracking and managing of these documents, giving rise to many inconsistencies.
Compliance and Regulatory Challenges
With constant changes in the financial sector, regulation and compliance pressure is high. Necessary internal documentation and external reporting must be done on time and with accuracy.
So, if your financial business still depends on paperwork and lacks necessary automation, you may face many regulation and compliance issues including:
- Different versions of the same document
- Faulty tracking
- Disposal of necessary documents
- Missed deadlines, and
- Enormous amounts of time to produce necessary reports.
Traditional documentation in fintech also involves huge security risks for your organization that are mitigated with the use of cloud-based platforms.
Communication Breakdowns
Traditional documentation is mostly geared towards the needs of one function or ‘level’ of an organization, such as compliance focus or advisor. This means that different teams in the same organization are using different document management solutions resulting in a communication breakdown at some point.
Also, for instance, on the client level, Fintech documentation has to be very accurate to provide flawless information and value to the clients. But, traditional documentation may not be available in a most easy-to-understand and neutral style. A lack of documentation automation also results in clients facing difficulty accessing and managing their information.
Difficulty in Data Retrieval and Analysis
Analysis is the most important tool for any financial business to strategize and move to the next level. But can you do it efficiently if your data is all over the place?
A report by Accenture points out that financial planning and analysis teams spend 85% of their time on labor-intensive production tasks to prepare data and 15% of their time on generating insights. That is, for most of their workday they aren’t even able to do what they are supposed to.
The same report also suggests that if this time can be flipped around, that is, teams investing most of their time, i.e., 80% in analysis, can achieve a 95% improvement in forecasting accuracy and also free up to 12 hours each week focusing on more productive or innovative work.
This can be achieved only if the documentation is simplified and automated, making data retrieval easier.
For example, trained APIs can recognize specific data fields, such as customer name, address, and invoice amount, and extract them automatically from documents within minutes.
So, now that we know the challenges you can face with complex and antique documentation, let’s look at ways you can simplify the documentation process to your benefit.
How To Simplify The Documentation Process In Finance Industry
Build User-Friendly Templates
Whether you are into lending, forecasting, or investing, templates are the key to achieving standardization and accuracy in the finance industry. From investment summaries, invoices, contracts, and operational review reports, building user-friendly templates can save you precious manhours.
You should use templates for both structured and unstructured data. Templates simplify document creation at multiple levels, are easy to understand and access, and increase process efficiency.
Templates are the best way to normalize data and keep all stakeholders on the same page. Data collected through templates also makes the retrieval and analysis process much easier.
With the help of templates, you can also centralize your data by connecting them directly to a repository.
Maximize Digitalization
We all use digitized documents, such as PDFs, DOCs, JPEGs, etc., daily and know their ease. Document digitization in an organization must also go in the same direction—scanning and taking pictures of all the documents in an organization and converting them into digital formats.
Digitization simplifies documentation at all levels – storing, accessing, and sharing. Scanned documents can be imported into a centralized database and then organized in a way that makes the most sense for your organization. With correct tagging, you can then access and share digitized documents easily, not just across your office but globally.
A few other reasons why you should maximize digitization as a financial organization are security, cost cutting, and minimized risk of data corruption.
Invest in a Reliable Knowledge Management Solution
To simplify the documentation process in your financial organization, you must invest in a knowledge management solution like Document360.
An AI-powered knowledge management system like Document360 can revolutionize and simplify the creation and management of documentation. Its user-friendly interface, bundled with powerful features, streamlines the entire process, making it effortless and efficient.
While choosing such a system, you must ensure that it integrates with the systems you already have in place. With 30+integrations, you can connect Document360 with your existing business tools like Microsoft Teams, Salesforce, Zendesk, and more.
It has a lot of benefits like:
- More visually understandable documentation as it is broken down into individual pages.
- A well-rounded view of what is happening with all facets of your data and content.
- Inbuilt analytics so you can understand and act upon the feedback from your clients and your team.
Before you can choose the right KMS for your organization, you must do some preliminary groundwork to ensure its efficiency:
- Identify your requirements as specifically as possible bsae. For example, would you benefit most by automating document creation, workflow, or anything else?
- Choose the right knowledge management system based on your existing SOPs, systems, and workflows.
- Most importantly, evaluate the system based on the type of financial organization you are. For instance, the requirements of a brokerage firm will be very different from an investment company.
Also, consider the technical superiority of the tool you are choosing. Is it using emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning? How can you use these to your advantage?
Reviewing and Training Team Adherence
People like what is familiar, so there is bound to be resistance when you change the documentation, too. But as people realize its benefits, they will adhere to it eventually.
In the meantime, you must review the adherence at specific time intervals.
However, you must ensure that the tools you implement for simplifying documentation are user-friendly and all teams are appropriately trained on them. The minimal the training required, the better, so an intuitive interface is ideal. Also, conducting a workflow analysis is crucial before any new implementation so you know what changes where, and for who. This will help you implement the new tools more efficiently.
Also, Check out: Knowledge Base for Credit Unions & Banks
Feedback and Continuous Improvement
Other than reviewing the adherence, you must review the new process too.
How efficiently is it working? What are the use cases? Where are the flaws? What needs fixing? The reviewing has to work at multiple levels.
To ensure this happens efficiently, take feedback from the team and continuously improve and further simplify your documentation.
Regular Review and Updating of Documentation
Everything else will fail if the fundamentals are discrepant. So, it is crucial to regularly review and update all documentation in your organization.
This doesn’t apply to all documents but the very basic and most important documents like P&L statements, balance sheets, cash flow statements, accounts receivable aging reports, and budget reports do fall under this category.
Conclusion
Simplifying documentation for your financial institution has immense benefits. You can achieve it efficiently with a structured approach and the introduction of documentation tools.
I hope this article helps you do so!