New Research Reveals The Scale of Sensitive Data Movement Outside Systems of Record in Regulated Industries

S-Docs survey of 600 regulated-industry leaders links fragmented document architecture to six-figure losses, manual workarounds, and service delays

NEW YORK, Sept. 1, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- S-Docs, the leading 100% Salesforce-native document automation solution, today released The Regulated Workflow Divide, a new report examining how healthcare, financial services, and public sector organizations manage their most consequential document workflows.   

The research reveals that document management friction rapidly turns into an operational crisis in regulated industries. About 50% of organizations expose sensitive data outside their system of record, and 69% route critical documents through three or more tools. Combined with employees wasting roughly 25% of their workweek re-entering data, reformatting documents, and compensating for disconnected systems, these compliance risks directly trigger lost revenue, deal delays, and severe service disruptions for clients, patients, and citizens. Among those reporting financial impact, almost a quarter (21%) estimate the cost measuring at $500,000 or more.

"In regulated industries, the document is often the evidence that a decision was made correctly, an obligation was met, or a service was delivered," said Brian Stimpfl, CEO of S-Docs. "Every handoff makes that evidence harder to fully govern. The strongest operators solve this by keeping document generation anchored in the governed systems they already trust, giving them greater control over the data and process."

In addition to identifying challenges in how regulated industries manage document data, the research also identifies what sets the organizations that handle document data best — the high-performers — apart from those that don't — the laggards. High performers and laggards are defined by their composite scores across six measures of workflow maturity, including audit readiness, cycle times, document rework, and the frequency and severity of failures. The groups are based on how organizations run their workflows, not their industry, size, or budget.

High performers are 89% more likely than laggards to generate most high-stakes documents directly from a system of record and 173% more likely to keep all document data within internal systems. That architectural discipline translates into stronger outcomes: high performers are 120% more likely than laggards to have avoided workflow stalls, missed SLAs, or compliance failures, and 57% more likely to have avoided financial impacts from document failures.

Having that foundation also positions them to adopt AI more responsibly. While 72% of organizations have begun deploying AI in at least one document workflow, only 30% say their document operations are governed and structured enough to support AI responsibly. The gap becomes even clearer across performance groups: 17% of high performers report having an AI-ready architectural foundation, compared with just 3% of laggards – nearly a 5x difference.

Additional key findings illustrate how fragmented architecture compounds operational risk: 

• 76% use more than one tool to perform the same document-related function
• 53% say security or compliance teams have raised concerns about third-party data exposure tied to document tools or vendors
• 45% have delayed or abandoned a tool because it could not pass a security or compliance review
• 49% say a current document tool introduced governance gaps that compliance or security teams had to address after implementation
• Despite experiencing financial consequences from workflow failures, only 29% significantly changed how they manage document operations, most often citing legacy systems, budget constraints, or unclear ownership

To learn more, download The Regulated Workflow Divide report here. Learn more about S-Docs at www.sdocs.com.

Methodology

S-Docs conducted The Regulated Workflow Divide online between June 29 and July 13, 2026. The report reflects the perspectives of 600 full-time U.S. professionals working at organizations with 500 or more employees across financial services, healthcare, and the public sector. Respondents held management-level or higher roles in IT, compliance, operations, or digital transformation. The survey was conducted at a 95% confidence level with a ±4% margin of error.

About S-Docs

S-Docs helps regulated organizations modernize document generation and e-Signature while keeping governance anchored in Salesforce. Built on Salesforce and secure by design, S-Docs supports connected document workflows across users, automations, portals, and emerging agentic experiences — helping organizations move faster without compromising control over sensitive data.

Media Contact

Arianna Biscoe-Sullivan

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SOURCE S-Docs