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Preservation of electronic documents must comply with EU-adopted regulations, such as eIDAS. But only very few professionals across departments actually know what QeA is, how it impacts the business processes, and who can help with its implementation. This article helps you understand that implementing QeA is a great way to avoid fines and penalties. Plus, it makes life easier for your departments, teams, and clients.
Table of contents:
The Impact Of Qualified Electronic Archiving: Why Should I Care?
There are massive benefits to applying QeA within your business/department (we’ll show you some examples of specified departments later in the article). We’ve picked up a list of those that most often help our clients:
1. Build Trust, Gain Advantage
Get above the competition by fulfilling business partners’ and customers’ expectations.
Compliance with regulations should be a part of your business strategy is no exaggeration. Using tools like QeA demonstrates you are using and implementing cutting-edge technology to be a trusted and long-term partner for your clients. You put trust and security at the core of your strategy. This, in turn, has a major impact on your brand’s reputation.
2. Achieve Legal Compliance Based On (Not Only) EU Regulations
Use QeA as your main weapon, whenever there is a legal proceeding.
Regarding a legal dispute, your company may be required to produce specific types of information as evidence. To be able to retain such information for specified periods of time, you need a solid, consistent digital archiving strategy. QeA should be a vital part of this strategy—it provides a legally recognized method for storing and preserving electronic records.
3. Save Money, Streamline Workflow, and Make Your People Happier
Say goodbye to paperwork; welcome more time for your people.
Traditional paper archives take up a lot of physical space and time for your employees. With QeA, you can electronically capture, index, and archive your documents. This eliminates the need for physical storage, making it easier to locate specific information within documents and thus saving your employees a significant amount of time.
4. Securely Preserve Data On A Long-Term Basis
Protect your electronic records from loss or corruption.
The point of a consistent digital archiving strategy is to preserve important information for long-term use. And it is not only due to legal compliance. Natural disasters and hardware/software issues can result in data loss in a blink of an eye, and you should be ready to have a solid backup of that information.
To provide you with a reliable backup of critical documents, QeA uses robust security measures (secure file formats, secure storage facility, regular backups, access controls, encryption, or monitoring).
QeA also employs standardized file formats and metadata that guarantee the integrity and usability of archived data over extended periods. This mainly means that:
You can access and use archived data even if the software that was used to create it is no longer available
You have access to the information about the archived data, e.g., its creator, date created, or the purpose of creation.
How Does QeA Help Saving Money Across Specific Sectors?
The amount of data is growing at an accelerated pace in every organization. Besides security, compliance, and legal implications, it is a growing budget burden.
Currently, over 70% of the IT budgets are used to maintain the current infrastructure and fees
Implementing cost-effective alternatives like QeA frees up funds to invest in further research, innovation, and business development.
Before we go through the specific sectors, here are three things QeA successfully deals with across sectors:
A vast amount of document management
It’s not difficult to get lost in all the contracts a corporate must handle and deal with. But with QeA, you can put all business or HR contracts in order and access and distribute them easily. All are in compliance with regulations related to individual departments.
Green/Sustainability/Paperless
QeA is a huge game-changer in following the corporate’s green promises. Reducing tons of paper will not only be your contribution to environmental conservation, but less paperwork will make the job more enjoyable for your employees.
Centralized data to improve workflow
A centralized repository with easy access to essential information for all employees enables seamless collaboration among teams (and departments). That means less e-mailing and annoying traffic organizing and more time for meaningful tasks.
Here you’ll learn more about how digitized archives help large organizations.
See QeA in action for corporates.
And now, let’s take a closer look at QeA’s impact on different sectors—including yours.
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- Finance
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Regulatory compliance
Working in the financial sector, you know compliance with MiFID II, Dodd-Frank, and others is crucial. A consistent digital archiving strategy helps you clearly understand data retention requirements.
Audit readiness
QeA facilitates audit readiness by ensuring that all relevant financial documents (compliance, financial health, and risk management practices) are securely stored, easily accessible, and maintained in their original format. Like this, it will smoothen the work of auditors, too.
Disaster recovery
A consistent digital archiving strategy can help your institution reduce the cost of data storage and improve your disaster recovery capabilities.
Read on how we helped EDR Credit Services to streamline their operations
See QeA in action in the finance sector
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- Insurance
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Regulatory compliance
You work in one of the heaviest regulated sectors; compliance with, e.g., Solvency II is essential. Whether it’s different policies, claims, underwriting files, customer records, or compliance documentation, with QeA, you’ll get a legally recognized method for storing and preserving them.
Faster claim solving
Storing documents electronically in a central electronic archive makes it easier for everyone involved: policyholders, insurance adjusters, and third-party service providers. For instance, when a new claim is registered, the system can automatically assign tasks to appropriate personnel, trigger alerts for deadlines, and escalate unresolved issues.
Fraud Detection and Prevention
Enhance the integrity and authenticity of insurance records by using digital signatures, timestamps, and secure access controls. The QeA system is equipped with algorithms that analyze claim data for suspicious patterns or red flags—unusually high claim amounts, frequent claims, claims from high-risk areas, or claims involving similar loss descriptions.
This is how we helped Federal Insurance by applying self-learning algorithms
See QeA in action in the Insurance sector
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- Banking
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Faster customer service
Quickly retrieve customer documents and decrease the waiting time. If you, let’s say, receive an online loan application, all its data and personal information will be automatically identified, securely stored, and routed directly to the appropriate personnel for review and approval.
Document management
No physical storage with tons of papers; customer account records, loan agreements, transaction documents, and everything written down on paper, can be digitized and stored securely.
Learn how we helped to upgrade business processes at Crelan—a cooperative bank.
See QeA in action in the Insurance sector
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- Public Sector
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Public record accessibility
When government agencies use QeA by e.g., providing online databases, they enable citizens and authorized personnel to access public records and documents easily. Through this, you can promote transparency, too; the public can see records, budgets, or policies and, therefore, understand the decisions taken by government institutions.
Better service, Cost efficiency
Faster document retrieval, thanks to digitization, equals increased efficiency of your responses to citizen requests and applications. This goes hand in hand with eliminating administrative overhead, printing documents, and storage space.
See QeA in action in the Government sector
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- Healthcare
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Sensitive patient data storing and access
QeA ensures compliance by securely storing medical records, audit trails, and patient consent forms related to medical procedures. This facilitates regulatory audits and reporting and mitigates legal risk, too.
Easy storing of medical images and reports
Store all types of medical imaging files—X-rays, MRIs, or CT scans, together with related reports. You can then access and review images or reports remotely, and promote timely diagnosis and treatment planning.
This is how our tools help AZ Alma Hospital manage vital patient information
See QeA in action in the Healthcare sector
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- Pharma
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Compliance with regulations
As you know, the pharmaceutical sector is heavily regulated; being compliant with e.g., FDA 21 CFR Part 11 is essential. Ensuring compliance by archiving and securely storing all important documents (on drug development, manufacturing, distribution, and post-marketing surveillance) might be the vital step you want to take.
Intellectual Property Protection
When it comes to research, QeA helps you securely store research data, patents, and trademarks. This is how you can protect all your valuable assets.
R&D data protection
The drug development process takes years and, by logic, contains extensive documentation (preclinical research data, patients’ consent, collaboration reports, etc.). Storing and accessing them with the help of QeA will streamline the workflow of all stakeholders while keeping all the data in compliance with strict research regulations.
See QeA in action in the Pharmaceutical sector
eIDAS, eIDAS 2, Belgian Digital Act, Qualified Electronic Archiving, And The Relation Between Them:
eIDAS:
eIDAS stands for Electronic Identification, Authentication, and Trust Services. This regulation establishes a legal framework for electronic transactions, electronic signatures, and trust services within the EU. It aims to help businesses, citizens, and public authorities carry out secure and seamless electronic interactions.
eIDAS 2:
Currently, there has been a revision of eIDAS called ‘eIDAS2’. It includes additional trust services—electronic attestation of attributes (the creation, verification, and validation of electronic attestation of attributes and related certificates); electronic archiving of electronic documents, management of remote electronic signature and seal creation devices, and recording of electronic data into an electronic ledger.
Belgian Digital Act:
Every country has its own implementation of the eIDAS regulation. In Belgium, it is Belgian Digital Act.
Qualified electronic archiving (QeA):
Qualified electronic archiving is a trust service recognized and regulated under the eIDAS regulation.
Your Possible Next Steps:
Do you have further questions about QeA for your specific business case? Let’s set up a call and see how we can collaborate! Not only are we the world’s first certified Qualified Electronic Archiving provider, but we have over 17 years of experience helping in digitization across different business sectors.
If you understand how QeA helps in general, but you’d like to see specific business cases, check the stories of our customers.
Well, if you feel like talking more than reading, just tell us, and we’ll get back to you!
