How to Use Sharepoint for Document Control

Document management is essential for many organizations since documents like policies, procedures, and product overviews are used daily. These documents must be:

• Up-to-date and accurate.
• Easy to access for employees.
• Reliable so employees can trust the information.

This is especially critical in regulated industries where compliance and processes require efficient document control.

​Many organizations using Microsoft 365 rely on SharePoint for managing documents. SharePoint is often the default system for document management, even if the organization has another system in place.

While SharePoint is a powerful tool, it’s not always ideal for managing groups of documents like policies. This guide will explain how you can use SP Marketplace, a document control tool, to set up effective document management in SharePoint.

What is Document Control?

Document control is a system of practices, tools, and processes that helps organizations manage documents. It ensures that documents are accurate, up-to-date, and meet specific standards.

​Why is Document Control Important?

Documents are a crucial part of how organizations and employees work. We often:

• Use documents to guide our tasks.
• Create and update documents as part of our jobs.
• Search for documents we need.
• Share documents with others.
• Save different versions of documents.

Many organizations invest time and money to manage their documents better. Controlling specific documents—those employees rely on for operations, compliance, reducing risks, and customer service—is a key part of this process.

To properly control documents, they must be:

• Accurate
• Up-to-date
• Easy to access
• Simple to find
• Useful for decision-making
• Secure
• Always the latest version

Proper control ensures employees can confidently use the right documents at the right time.

What Types of Documents Are Usually Controlled?

Here are examples of documents that organizations often control:

• Policies and procedures
• Guidelines
• Product descriptions or manuals
• How-to guides
• Document templates
• Contracts
• Standard presentations
• Brand assets
• And more!

These are important documents employees rely on, so keeping them organized and updated is essential.

Challenges in Managing Controlled Documents

Managing controlled documents can be tricky, and organizations often face these common challenges:

1. Creating Centralized Access
Employees want a single, trustworthy location to access documents, like policies, and to be confident they’re seeing the latest version. This can be difficult in organizations with multiple sites, departments, and teams creating documents.

2. Finding Documents Easily
Poor search tools, complicated navigation, closed systems, and scattered SharePoint sites can make it hard for employees to locate the documents they need. This wastes time and can lead to employees ignoring important documents.

3. Dealing with Multiple Versions
When employees rely on outdated versions of documents sent through email or stored in file-sharing systems, it creates confusion and undermines trust. Having multiple versions on the intranet can cause employees to use outdated or inaccurate documents, leading to risks for the organization.

4. Encouraging Employees to Read and Act
Even though controlled documents like policies are critical, they’re often not engaging. Getting employees to read these documents—and take necessary actions—can be a challenge. It’s also hard to track who has read a document and whether they’ve acted on it.

5. Managing the Document Lifecycle
Every controlled document has a lifecycle—from creation to revision and eventual replacement. SharePoint often lacks the necessary features to manage documents effectively through all stages of this process.

Addressing these challenges is key to ensuring that controlled documents remain useful, accurate, and accessible to everyone who needs them.

SharePoint's Strengths in Document Management

SharePoint offers many features that make it a popular choice for document management systems (DMS). Many organizations use it as their primary tool for managing documents because of its capabilities, including:

• Flexible document libraries for easy sharing and access.
• Custom folders to help improve document findability.
• A powerful search tool with Microsoft SharePoint Search.
• Granular access control to ensure documents are secure and only visible to the right people.
• Seamless integration with Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365.
• Built-in version control to keep track of document updates.
• Enterprise-grade security from Microsoft.
• Accessibility support for diverse needs.
• And more!

These features make SharePoint great for general document management. However, SharePoint alone may not fully meet the needs of managing controlled documents. If you want a central repository for controlled documents using only out-of-the-box SharePoint, you might still face challenges like those mentioned earlier.

SharePoint's Limitations in Document Control

While SharePoint is a powerful document management system, it’s not specifically designed for document control. This creates challenges that make it hard to scale and implement document control effectively without extra tools.

1. Missing Key Features
SharePoint lacks many features needed for managing controlled documents, such as:

• Tools for employee attestation.
• Easy lifecycle management for document owners.
• Role-specific views for managers.

Adding these features requires significant effort, costs, technical skills, and time to set up.

2. Decentralized Governance
SharePoint’s design supports a decentralized approach, allowing teams to manage documents their own way. While this can be helpful, it often results in controlled documents being scattered across multiple sites and libraries. This makes it hard for employees to find what they need in a central, reliable location.

3. Lack of Automation
Managing controlled documents involves many steps, like:

• Getting document owners and policy holders to collaborate.
• Notifying employees about document changes.
• Onboarding new staff and ensuring they’ve read required documents.
• Generating reports.

In SharePoint, these tasks often require manual effort. Although automation is possible, it’s complex to set up and usually depends on missing features found in tools like SP Marketplace. For effective document control, organizations often need additional software to bridge these gaps.

Real-World Uses for Controlled Documents in the Workplace

Effective document control is essential for all organizations, but it’s especially critical in regulated industries. It impacts both compliance and operations. Tools like SP Marketplace are great for managing controlled documents in these settings.

Here are some real-world applications of document control with SP Marketplace:

1. Health and Safety Documentation
Proper control of health and safety documents helps prevent accidents, which can have serious consequences. SP Marketplace provides a cost-effective alternative to expensive document control software, ensuring safety policies are followed.

2. Accurate Product and Service Information
Clients need up-to-date, accurate details about products and services. Without this, businesses risk accusations of misinformation, regulatory violations, and more. SP Marketplace makes it easier to handle these documents, especially in industries like financial services.

3. Compliance in Pharmaceuticals
In the pharmaceutical industry, compliance is vital for everything from marketing and selling medications to managing clinical trials. SP Marketplace helps control and manage the documentation required for these processes.

4. Critical Healthcare Procedures
In healthcare, precise documentation supports patient care. Poorly managed documents can compromise clinical outcomes. SP Marketplace ensures that critical procedures and compliance documents are actively controlled, leaving no room for error.

Using SP Marketplace with SharePoint
While SharePoint is a powerful document management tool, it’s not built for document control. SP Marketplace integrates with SharePoint to provide a complete document control system, making it easier to manage, update, and secure critical documents in regulated industries.