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// Quality & compliance

Document control for a quality system that survives the audit.

A certified management system (ISO 9001 and the like) lives on controlled documents: procedures, work instructions, forms, with signed revisions and tracked read-acknowledgement. Shared folders hold up until the audit arrives. Here is what it takes so you are not caught out.

What a controlled document really requires

  • An identifiable current edition: the reader must know they are looking at the latest, not an old copy.
  • Read-acknowledgement tied to the person and the specific revision: a signature that holds in audit, not a generic «seen».
  • Version history intact: who approved what, when and with what meaning.
  • An explicit lifecycle (draft, review, in force, withdrawn), not the implicit «it is in the right folder».

The leap that matters: from folder to linkage

The value is not storing documents, it is linking them to the requirements they must satisfy.

  • Link each document to the standard requirements it covers, so the compliance matrix is read, not rebuilt.
  • See the gaps: which requirements have no document covering them, before the auditor finds them.
  • Handle standard editions as entities: when ISO 9001:2026 lands, 2015 stays valid for those who have not transitioned.
  • On a new edition, put people back into read-acknowledgement: they re-read and re-sign what changed.

Fit it to your sector without rebuilding

Pharma quality, an engineering firm and a generic DMS do not share the same states or metadata.

  • Declarative domain profiles: metadata, states and lifecycle change per sector without duplicating code.
  • On-premise when documents must not leave: healthcare, defence, public tenders.
  • Built on open standards (Alfresco), data in your database: no lock-in, clear exit.

Preparing for a certification or audit and the documentation is still in shared folders? Let us look at how to bring it under control before the visit.

Let’s talk

Page updated 23 August 2026.