Digital transformation: go digital to thrive in new market conditions

For traditionally office-based businesses - for example, accountants, professional services, banking, finance, legal, research, consultants, health, housing and property (it's a long list) - systems review must be carried out at a more fundamental level. Digital transformation will be required to integrate all areas of a business, fundamentally changing or adding an important layer to operations to optimise efficiency and deliver value to customers.

Digital workflow efficiency

What happens when your staff save business critical information in several locations?

Even moreso during a period of business disruption, information is saved in: Outlook folders (emails), on PCs (personal folders), in desk drawers (printed documents), in filing cabinets (manila folders), in storage boxes in warehouses, and on multiple servers, or Cloud locations and hard-drive back-ups. When someone needs a specific piece of information, how often do they have to ask another member of staff to look through emails and forward information to them, or ask the warehouse company to return a specific piece of paper that they believe is in a specific box (fingers crossed).

Such processes of storing and retrieving information are time consuming, wasteful and highly insecure.

A digital workflow enables a business to get things right first time at the point of information capture, and automate specific work streams around a single version of a document. A digital workflow affords the opportunity to operate efficiently, securely and compliantly. 

Digital risk management

For both business efficiency and data compliance, it is imperative that the whereabouts of documents is known, together with a time-stamped auditable record of access and associated activity.

Duplication of documents, or their removal from a system, instantly generates unnecessary risks, from data loss to data breach or criminal activity. To attempt to persist with paper-based processes and hard copy archives increases risk levels considerably. The risks inherent in paper-based systems can quickly compromise a business' profitability, competitiveness and, as we have seen in during the Covid pandemic, its ability to continue trading effectively.   

A business must protect the data it holds and have a demonstrably robust system in place to manage the life-cycle of information from the time it enters the business, to the time it is destroyed in accordance with mandated retention periods.  

Finding the right system is a challenge even for companies that have all staff located in one office. Now that there is an impulse in many organisations to allow staff to continue to work from home in the post-pandemic world, the challenge is greater. 

Digital management control 

Even if only 10% of the workforce work more frequently from home, as was the case in post-lockdown China, organisations will need systems in place to achieve a range of business-critical factors, ranging from staff productivity and operations efficiency, to management control and data security.   

In an article published by the BBC, four experts gave their insights into how people's experiences during the pandemic could affect cities and what people might do to blend home working, commuting and office attendance.

Digital agility for new market conditions

There are new drivers in the post-pandemic commercial world; businesses seek new agility, while some historically office-based staff seek more flexibility in terms of location and hours.

Only a digital solution provides the workflow efficiency, security and management control required to evolve your business with complete confidence.   

Here are some of the proven benefits and safeguards of working with Document Manager that we can help you introduce to your organisation: 

• Index and assign electronically received emails and documents to a secure central hub

• Scan and upload paper documents (from HR records, to contracts and expenses) 

• Centralise data access for all, with controlled access levels

• Fast document data search and retrieval

• Simple policy-based filing from remote locations
  

• Integration with all leading platforms

• Automated workflows from input to finalisation

• Threshold alerts

• Workflow collaboration

• Assured retention/deletion, risk management, security and compliance

• Stress-free audits with complete activity audit trails