It’s no secret that the traditional workplace is transforming. The Covid-19 pandemic has definitely sped the process up, making more and more companies embark on an empowering digital transformation journey.
Business document digitization, however, is often a complex process. That means various mistakes can be committed along the way. These issues will often stand in the way of an optimal outcome, keeping an enterprise from embracing the full potential of digital transformation.
Viewing the Digital Transformation as an IT Process
Business document digitization is an all-encompassing process. Yet many businesses leave it to the IT department. As a result, many digital processes are far from optimal because they don’t account for dynamics and workflows in a specific department or team.
Document digitalization isn’t purely technical. It has to be strategic. There need to be guidelines in place, outlining what’s going to be digitized, how the change is going to happen and what employees will face as a result of the upgrade.
Leaving employees out of the process or unprepared for the change will result in major slowdowns and inefficiencies. Thus, digitization shouldn’t be viewed purely as a technological process. While IT professionals can often handle the specific steps of creating a digital workplace, input from other team members will also be required to create a roadmap towards efficiency.
Trying to Handle Digitization on Your Own
DIY transformations often miss the mark.
There’s a simple reason why attempting to handle business document digitization on your own isn’t going to deliver excellent results.
Document digitization consists of multiple processes. There’s the preparation of the paper-based archive, scanning and imaging, the selection of a cloud-based document storage platform and a document management system.
All of these processes come with their specifics. Scanning a large volume of documents can be time-consuming if you don’t have the knowledge or the technology needed for the purpose. Entering digital documents in a brand new database will also be cumbersome in the absence of workflows.
It’s much better to leave such tasks to professionals. In fact, outsourcing digitization will save you time and money. Such services are very cost-efficient and they yield a high return on investment in the form of enhanced productivity and improved customer service.
Being Near-Sighted
Business document digitization should be a strategy for the long-run.
Many organizations commit the grave mistake of focusing their investment too heavily on needs that will arise in the near future.
What needs to be understood, however, is the fact that digital technologies evolve rapidly. That’s why a good digital transformation opportunity allows for scalability and upgrades.
In the absence of such a long-term plan, an organization is likely to experience efficiency issues and downtime when attempting to migrate from one platform to another. When managers think about the future, they will allow for seamless transitions. Cloud-based technologies typically enable change without significant modification being required. The key here is to choose both a platform and a digitization approach that will allow for growth and change when necessary.
Moving Too Fast
Digitization works best when a phased approach is adopted. This mean making changes one step at a time, preparing employees for the upcoming upgrades and keeping the business fully-functional while transformations are occurring.
In their desire to modernize quickly, many companies bite off way more than they can chew.
If you’ve been reliant on paper-intense processes up to this point, adopting a completely paperless approach overnight would be too ambitious of a goal. Instead, think of the processes that take up most resources and that are too cumbersome. These are the ones that will have to be transformed first. As these contribute to improved workflows and increase efficiency, you’ll find it much easier to continue introducing change.
Business digital transformations should be viewed as a marathon rather than a spring. An ongoing commitment to modernization is the one that matters, not trying to overhaul everything in a single go.
A Failure to Use the Full Potential of New Technology
Document management technology has lots and lots of capabilities. Smart indexing, artificial intelligence (AI) enabled workflows, powerful automation options – all of these features have become readily available. Unfortunately, many businesses fail employing everything that a digitization system has to offer.
When choosing business document digitization technologies, make sure that all capabilities of such solutions will be utilized.
Often times, workers will refrain from using everything that technology has to offer because of unfamiliarity or because they’re used to doing things a certain way.
Getting all staff members properly trained is essential to empower employees and give them the skills required to make the most of the new work model. It’s simply not a good idea to invest in a powerful new solution that will only be used partially.
Business Document Digitization: It’s a Mindset Change
As you’ve probably gathered from some of the errors listed above, the human factor is very important for the successful introduction of new technologies.
Ongoing communication, training and a strategic plan for the future deployment of digital platforms will all lead to good results. That’s why you need to dedicate enough time to getting ready for the digital transformation. If you do so, you will end up moving to a new model fast and without having to deal with hiccups (or big roadblocks) along the way.