WHO CONTROLS THE QUALITY OF YOUR INFORMATION?

Information quality & document governance

Identified owners, controlled quality, enforced rules, stronger governance: discover how M-Files guarantees up-to-date, reliable documents.

Galaxy Conseils • Companies & financial institutions

To win a major contract with a public company, Société Alpha must show that it meets strict quality requirements. The auditor appointed by the client comes on site to check its procedures, with documents as evidence.

Aïcha is confident: the company wrote all its procedures three years ago. But the auditor opens the workshop's “Quality Procedure”: it still mentions a machine sold last year and a manager who has left the company. The standard customer contract cites old terms. The annual report attached to the file dates from the previous year.

None of these documents was wrong when it was written. But nobody was in charge of reviewing them, updating them or checking that they were still valid. They had simply aged.

The auditor notes several discrepancies. Société Alpha has to update everything urgently, and the contract is postponed to the next session. Aïcha realizes that information, like equipment, needs regular maintenance.

Information without an owner ends up degrading

Procedures, standard contracts, reports, internal policies: these documents are created with care, then forgotten. The world changes around them (someone leaves, a product evolves, a rule changes), but they stay frozen. Without control, the quality of information quietly degrades:

Designate, define, control

Guaranteeing the quality of information means applying a few simple rules: every important document has an identified owner, a review date, an approval workflow, and a status that clearly shows whether it is valid. The system reminds owners when a document needs to be reviewed.

The same documents, with M-Files

Let's revisit Aïcha's story, this time with a Société Alpha that manages the quality of its documents in M-Files.

1. Designate. Every key document gets an owner: the annual report goes to Management, the customer contract to Legal, the quality procedure to the Quality manager.

2. Define. Rules are set for each document type: review frequency, who approves, mandatory information.

3. Control. On the scheduled date, the owner receives a review task. They confirm that the document is still valid or update it. The “Approved” status appears only after this check.

4. Correct. When a machine is sold or a manager changes, the relevant procedure is corrected and approved again. The previous version stays in the history.

5. Steer. An “Information quality” dashboard shows Aïcha which documents are up to date, which need review and which are overdue.

At the next audit, every document presented carries the mention “Controlled”, with its owner and its last review date. The auditor notes no discrepancies, and Société Alpha wins the contract.

Why M-Files is different

In M-Files, the owner, the review date and the status are part of each document's information. Workflows can automatically trigger a review task on the scheduled date, remind the owner and block the “Approved” status until the check has been done.

Mandatory information prevents saving an incomplete document, and the history keeps every version and every approval.

This principle applies to an SME like Société Alpha as well as to a bank, where procedures and internal policies are regularly examined by auditors and supervisory authorities.

And what about you?

Ask yourself this question:

“For each of your procedures currently in force, could you say who is responsible for it, and when it was last reviewed?”

If the answer is no, the quality of your information is controlled by nobody.