Policies form the foundation for creating various playbooks that guide the operations of a company or organization. This makes policy documents fundamental to the success of a business. Creating, reviewing, implementing and keeping track of multiple policies can be a huge task, that’s why the use of a suitable policy management software is recommended.
However, finding the right policy management solution isn’t as straightforward as walking up to the grocery store and picking your favorite loaf of bread. It takes knowing precisely what to look for. If you’re tasked with finding the best policy management software for your company, you might be overwhelmed with the numerous options available on the market.
Fortunately, you have this guide to point you in the right direction…
Consider version control and revision tracking
Larger businesses may require input from different people, both from within and outside of the organization. The last thing you want is to have to email versions of the same policy to the various parties to work on them separately. This can create massive confusion, and make it difficult to track the changes made on previous versions of documents.
So, it helps to have a solution that makes it possible for each separate party to collaborate on the policy material without having to duplicate it. The solution also needs to provide a means to keep track of all the changes made so that any errors can be traced and corrected or omissions to be incorporated with ease.
Such version control not only allows for review of previous document versions as needed, but also makes the everything audit ready and legally compliant.
Think about file support
A solution that supports only a select few file formats limits you to those specific formats. This means that if you should want to switch to a different file format altogether in the future, your options will be limited. When picking a policy management solution, it is a good idea to check to ensure that it accepts the different file formats that most establishments use including PDF, DOC, XLS and more.
Go for an easy control panel and reporting capabilities
The best solution is one that is not only easy to use, but also offers a high-quality overview of the status of all policies that are specific to the user’s role via its control panel. The idea is to ensure that employees can easily monitor actionable steps related to the various policies in the company, and keep abreast of all current tasks and document statuses. Even more important, the solution will be greatly useful if it can provide easy access to reports, and a means to easily generate final reports in various formats.
Make security a priority
No policy management software is complete unless it has a secure built-in framework that integrates seamlessly with the rest of your databases. Ensure that the solution you’re choosing provides secure access, to guarantee that contracts and confidential policy documents will remain protected.
Conclusion
Whether you opt for on-premise or cloud technology, the features you need to evaluate a policy management solution remains the same. Hopefully the advice above helps you find a future-proof policy management solution that helps keep policies secure and provides support to take your company to the next level.
