Admation’s MS Word Approvals: Transforming Documentation Review and Approval

The need to meet regulatory compliance is rising every day. It’s not just heavily regulated sectors like pharma and financial services that have large teams to create and manage a vast library of documentation. Product information and disclosures, data use agreements, corporate responsibility and sustainability statements — there’s an ever growing list that less regulated industry sectors also have to comply with.

Consumers want to know more about what they are buying too.

• Are the raw materials sustainably sourced?
• Does the company treat primary producers ethically?
• Does the manufacturing meet standards?

Often companies want to convey their social philosophy to customers to build brand identity.

All of it involves developing a library of documentation that can be repurposed and distributed across physical and digital platforms. And it requires a defined, streamlined and managed process that results in error-free documentation, created swiftly.

For years, Simple’s clients have been using the Approval Workflow in Simple Admation to create templated pathways for marketing assets and documentation. This ensures that documents are reviewed, checked, corrected and approved by relevant stakeholders before they hit the market.

Now there’s a way to drive more accuracy and efficiency in the process. MS Word Approvals integrated with WOPI — Web Application Open Platform Interface — transforms the process into a faster, more reliable one. In layman’s terms using WOPI to integrate MS Word into an application allows the application users to access all the editing features of MS Word in-app.

This is how it works in practice.

Say the Sustainability Team produces a 3-year plan named Green Plan 2025. It needs a few sign offs — from the head of manufacturing, HR, legal, advertising and marketing teams, social media consultants — before hitting the market. The document owner can upload this document to Simple Admation using a templated pathway for review by all stakeholders, create a checklist and set deadlines.

While a reviewer makes changes to the document, Simple Admation will automatically save the feedback, file every version and create an audit trail. Onboard features like collated feedback, checklists and compare version screens make a reviewers life easy. But to make changes to the document a reviewer has to download the document, make changes and upload it. Ditto for everyone on the document trail.

Now Admation MS Word Approvals with the WOPI integration removes this last hurdle.

Here’s how.

Almost all documents originate in MS Word on the document owners hard drive. Once the owner has uploaded it and sent it down a Simple Admation approval pathway, the document does not need to leave the application. Any change can be done in-app. No more downloading and uploading at any stage of the review process. Circling back to the document owner — all changes can be approved, rejected or modified without downloading the document. When it is final, it will automatically be stored, ready to be used.

This results in two huge benefits. One, across a lengthy, cross-functional approval process hundreds of manhours are saved. Second, since the document does not leave the application, the possibility of a wrong file being uploaded along the way is eliminated. This can potentially stop an expensive error from creeping into the process.

Why is this change such a big deal? Ask the teams that are responsible for large, complex documentation that has to be relevant across global geographies, cultural norms and customer expectations. A small error can result in non-compliance, exposure to fines and litigation and loss of reputation. They deserve the best automated, stress free processes, with the highest chance of creating accurate, compliant documentation, as swiftly as possible.

Simple Admation is built around complete understanding of the asset creation processes. We know how much collaboration it needs. That’s why we’ve upgraded it with WOPI enabled MS Approvals. So our clients can leverage digital acceleration to be more competitive.

We’ve prepared a short video that explain exactly how the integration works in practice.

For more, reach out to our team and we’d be happy to demonstrate how Simple Admation can drive real efficiencies in how you create, review and approve documents.