The more clients you get, the higher the volume of paperwork you collect.
Relying on traditional document request methods, like postal service and email for document collection, is time-consuming, tedious, error-prone, and frustrating.
Long email threads, cluttered mailboxes, mail provider restrictions, constant back-and-forth with customers, and other challenges lead to missing files, lost time, poor service provision, and decreased customer satisfaction.
Document request software puts an end to all these problems. It's a smart, stress-free way of collecting documents from vendors or clients, making it easier to perform due diligence and oversight, and enhance client relationships.
This guide shares how document request tools work and how they can benefit your business.
Why do businesses request documents?
Relying on traditional document request methods, like postal service and email for document collection, is time-consuming, tedious, error-prone, and frustrating.
Document request or collection is a necessary step in several business processes as it ensures you have the files needed for interactions and transactions with clients.
For example, a lender may request multiple documentation, such as personal identification documents, bank statements, utility bills, and more, to verify applicants before approving loans or credit.
Instead of constantly chasing clients for specific documents, the document request or collection process brings together the correct files, which:
- Saves time and money
- Makes collaboration easier
- Reduces client confusion
- Ensures projects don’t stall
Benefits of document collection software
We all want to get more done without wasting time.
So the last thing you need is documents flying around between your employees and your customers as you try to find, share, and secure important documents from clients. Not to mention the risk of confidential documents ending up in the wrong hands.
File sharing solutions like Dropbox or Google Drive may help, but only to some extent.
Document collection tools offer a simple, organized, compliant, intuitive, and secure way of collecting documents while tracking project task completion. Let's look at the host of benefits these tools provide for your business.
Time and cost savings
Time and cost savings impact your bottom line, which is why you need document request software to work faster, more consistently, and take on more client work.
A document collection tool saves you the cumbersome task of repeatedly reaching out to vendors for documents or requesting files from clients. You can find and review documents quickly at the click of a button, allowing you to refocus on other business priorities and perform oversight management.
Each minute an employee spends trying to find documents or follow up on paperwork costs money. Document request tools speed up the search and collection process, saving your company money, and making employees more engaged, productive, and satisfied.
Meet regulatory and compliance requirements
With document collection software, you have everything you need at the right time and place, meaning you won’t miss important timelines or deadlines and can meet regulatory requirements in your industry.
Document collection platforms also comply with GDPR and other regulations, keeping your data safe and ensuring nothing goes missing or gets lost in transit.
Up-to-date documentation on file
Manual or traditional document collection methods are time-consuming and error-prone. Document collection software ensures you have the most up-to-date paperwork on file, making due diligence reviews easier and ensuring project tasks aren’t delayed.
Stronger vendor and client relationships
Document collection tools eliminate the hassle and frustrations of getting the right, important paperwork, helping you establish good relationships with your vendors and better customer experience.
Organized document database
Instead of using inefficient and insecure processes of submitting or receiving documents, using a document collection tool keeps everything neatly categorized in file request folders so you can focus on your core business. No more cluttered inboxes, long email threads, or hunting for missing attachments.
Faster approvals
Manual document collection methods slow down the customer approval process—particularly in loan or mortgage applications. With software, you can process multiple applications, improve employee productivity, and get more clients approved faster.
Improve application workflows
Waiting for a vendor or client to mail documents via post or email slows progress on both ends, creating a never-ending, frustrating cycle for all.
Document collection systems provide timely reminders with clear instructions of the required documents and corresponding deadlines. This speeds up application workflows and increases turnaround times so you can focus on new client leads and sales.
Correct file management
Document request software saves employees' time, which would otherwise be spent hunting for poorly labeled or misfiled documents. Software saves your documents the right way, in an accessible format, and according to an agreed set of rules, keeping things moving smoothly.
Better visibility and less confusion
Manual file requests aren’t only error-prone, but lack a comprehensive paper trail, creating confusion for you and your clients. Document request software creates the much-needed organization, ensuring the right eyes see the documents while enhancing the audit process and reducing the risks, like data loss or breaches.
Consistent service
Manual document request is often irregular and inconsistent. Document request tools help you request and follow up documents in a consistent and organized manner, with clear instructions. This enables you to maintain professional standards and deliver quality services and experiences to your vendors and customers.
Fewer errors
Misreading text, keying in the wrong figures, or skipping fields happens to the most well-trained employee. While human errors are rife in manual document request methods, decreasing efficiency and service quality, software delivers the work with better accuracy.
Competitive business advantage
Clients want things done fast but with high levels of accuracy and quality. A business with efficient documentation processes is appealing to prospective investors and clients, and it proves your dedication and commitment as a gatekeeper of crucially important information.
Document request software allows you to process requests quickly, as well as source, file, and present documents in an accurate and orderly manner. This will “wow” your customers and make your business a more tangible and valuable asset to them.
Tools like Inscribe extract and return important details from company files like financial documents, giving lenders and other financial institutions the confidence to approve (or reject) applications faster.
Automated verification
Document request software organizes all your internal and external (clients, vendors, and other third parties) paperwork, automating the verification process.
A bank, for instance, can automatically verify its customers using software that directly pulls financial information from their documents. Once the customer enters their banking details, the document request tool serves up a report of all their accounts: savings, checking, and lines of credit, among others.
You don’t have to keep chasing that last page or worrying about incomplete data. This shaves valuable time off the loan document request process and deliver accurate files for approval.
As a lender, you also get to see the status of your customers’ loan applications, giving your business the ability to stay efficient, accurate, and competitive. Plus, it improves the integrity of the loan file while reducing overall risk to your lending business.
Examples of business use cases for document request software
Who benefits from document request software? Any industry that collects paperwork—legal, real estate, manufacturing, healthcare, and even governments—can leverage these tools to deliver better services to their customers.
Here’s a look at how different departments use document request and collection to improve workflows:
Sales
Your sales and marketing team handles a lot of paperwork from the moment they approach prospects to when they onboard clients. Keeping up with all the important steps, from drafting to requesting to reviewing to signing off on documents can be difficult.
Document request software quickens the process, delivering the documents needed at the right time and to the right people who need to see them.
Human resource and administration
Paperless recruitment and onboarding were once a dream for HR and administration teams. With document request software, it’s a reality during the hiring process.
Administrators and HR personnel no longer have to wait days to deliver pre-employment tests, receive applicants’ documents, sift through emails, or review and manually insert data into their systems.
They can virtually find, interview, and process candidates thanks to organized, properly filed, and easily shareable document request tools. After performing all the employee selection procedures, the HR team can keep the information for use when new opportunities arise that suit specific applicants.
Know Your Customer (KYC) and client onboarding
Lenders don’t have to sift through customer documents before approving or denying loan applications.
Document request tools allow you to get all the business documents you need to work with new customers and hasten the credit approval process. These tools improve your process so you can send and receive loan application documents faster and make more money.
Streamline the document request process in your business
File sharing tools can collect and manage your documents—but that’s all they’re good at.
Having an all-in-one document request software means no juggling multiple tools or accounts. It’s a quick, simple, and seamless way of ensuring your employees have all the documents they need in one place to perform their duties and satisfy your clients.
Ready to eliminate the constant back-and-forth of document requests using traditional methods?
Use Inscribe to create a simple, quick, professional, and seamless experience your customers will love you for.
Inscribe makes it easy to request, verify, and cross-reference important information in financial documents. It even performs credit analysis and checks for fraud, empowering you to make approvals with confidence.
Talk to one of our experts today to find out how Inscribe works.
