Glossary

Evidence

The set of data, documents, logs, states, decisions, signatures, timings and integrations that demonstrate what happened in a process instance.

The set of data, documents, logs, states, decisions, signatures, timings and integrations that demonstrate what happened in a process instance. Without evidence, measurement becomes interpretation; with it, an organization can audit, explain and learn.

The difference between producing it and reconstructing it separates a calm audit from a three-week project. When the process leaves it as a by-product, the evidence exists before anyone asks for it.

On this site: Governance & compliance →

Related terms

Audit

The ability to demonstrate who did what, when, from where and on which object. It rests on per-instance trails recording action, date, time, user and device, for both active and closed instances.

Compliance by design

An approach in which compliance is built into the system design rather than verified afterwards through audit.

Data lineage

The trail revealing where a data item came from, which process captured or transformed it, which rule modified it, which system received it and which indicator used it.

Demonstrable maturity

The principle that maturity assessment rests on evidence extractable from the platform rather than on declarative self-assessment.

Document management

The custody market for documents — versions, permissions, retention, signature, evidence. The current name of what was once content services platforms, and before that ECM.

ECM (enterprise content management)

The retired name of the document market — Gartner replaced it with content services platforms in 2017 and today publishes the Magic Quadrant for Document Management.

Evidence of AI intervention

The record of which model intervened in a process, with what input, what output it produced and what action followed.

Five-dimension validation

The minimum scope of integral testing: functional, data, rules, objective and evidence.

Historisation

The preservation of how a data item changes over time, so its value at any past moment can be reconstructed.

Intelligent document processing

Extracting, classifying and validating information from unstructured documents so that business processes can act on it.