Audit trail

An audit trail is a record of a document’s path or movement across an organization, from when it was created to when it was archived or declared obsolete and destroyed. The purpose of recording the lifecycle of a document is to reach the compliance level imposed by different rules, regulations, and laws a company is subjected to. Companies using an electronic document creation and management system can more easily record an audit trail than companies working with paper documents alone. 

Organizations can move to a content-level granularity for their audit trails when adding a structured content authoring tool to the document management tech stack. Unlike a document-centric organization, a content-centric organization can track changes made to any type of content, no matter how small: be it a word, sentence, phrase, paragraph, or document. This feature enables companies operating in highly regulated industries to reach industry standards faster and efficiently maintain the same level over time.

Example use cases

  • Documentation for medical devices regulatory submissions
  • Implementation of company-wide quality standards
  • Regulatory bodies audit of sensitive and critical information

Key benefits

  • Establish and maintain compliance with industry standards and regulations throughout the lifecycle of the product or service 
  • Reduce time for audit preparation from weeks to a couple of hours 
  • Gain excellent overview over content changes, who made them and when

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