Simplify providing documents for FOI requests, hearings and more with NEC Document Management’s Bundling module

Collecting and collating documents for court hearings, appeals, FOI and GDPR requests takes time and effort. And with resources under pressure, some authorities are struggling to produce collated documents in time.  

The simplest approach would be to have everything in one place in one format such as PDF. But when you have MS Word files, emails, scanned documents and pictures across multiple systems, you need a document bundling application to help.

Taking control of information

Organisations need to collect sets of documents for all kinds of reasons. It might be to fulfil a Freedom of Information (FOI) request, or to provide information for a legal hearing. Whatever the reason, it can be a hugely laborious task.  

Even if a document management system contains most of the files, documents, emails and pictures, an officer still needs to bring everything together. That means finding files, redacting sensitive information and trying to combine it all into one, accessible and shareable document like a PDF. And when those files are held in multiple systems across different departments, which they often are, the job gets much harder. 

Bringing information together 

PDFs are a great format for accessibility; everyone can read PDFs with free apps on computers and mobile phones. However – creating a PDF from MS Office files, photos, emails and more can be hard work indeed.  

Let’s say you have a court hearing and need to present two Word documents, two images and four emails, you would need to edit each one and redact or delete anything sensitive. You’d then need to either convert or save each one as a PDF. Then finally, you must join all the PDFs together to make one master PDF to share. For GDPR Subject Access Requests (SARs) or Freedom of Information requests, where there’s often far more information, that’s an enormous task.  

Making the process simple with NEC Document Bundling

Our Document Bundling module for NEC Document Management streamlines the process from end to end. It makes the collection, collation, redaction and sharing process as painless as possible, lets different teams collaborate, and outputs a single PDF.  

Document Bundling accepts 79 different file types, from MS Word and emails to scanned images and even specialised CAD files. This means you can use it to collect and redact files from any team for any reason and create one single PDF. 

4 easy steps to build a redacted PDF from multiple files from multiple sources 

Creating a redacted PDF from lots of files couldn’t be easier with Document Bundling. Here’s what you do: 

1. Open a new ‘bundle’ and start adding files from NEC DM or from other systems
2. Redact sensitive information using the in-built redaction tool 
3. Create a single PDF bundle with an automatic table of contents 
4. Share it by email 

Any digital text (like in Word documents or emails) stays searchable, so it’s easy to find key words and phrases. The new PDF is also managed the same way as any other file, so it can be shared, exported, emailed or even published through online services if you have them. 

Capture files from other systems  

NEC Document Management has all sorts of tools to make information input simple. It can take in emails in bulk, for example, and has a simple scanning module. This means you don’t need to use the system in every service to take advantage of Document Bundling – you just add any file you want, wherever it is. 

We know that SARs are covered by legal teams in some councils and HR teams in another. So we’ve kept it simple. Just buy a license for the people who need it and make them users of NEC Document Management too.  

Find out more 

To see how Document Bundling might make your day easier, get in touch through documentsolutions@necsws.com.