A building I once worked in was originally the headquarters of the American Guernsey Cattle Club. The four-story building was the largest in town, and I’m told that much of its space was occupied by row after row of desks where clerical staff sat. Their job was to type data about livestock onto index cards.
Computers came along, automating much of the process. No longer needing all that clerical help, the club moved on to smaller accommodations. The building–somewhat ironically–became home to BYTE magazine.
Scenarios like this continue to play out today on larger and smaller scales. Companies will always find ways to leverage technology to automate manual processes and become more efficient. Unfortunately for anyone selling copiers and MFPs, automation often means turning a paper-based process to digital, killing clicks.
A number of factor are driving the automation of paper-based processes. The most obvious is the sheer volume of work that is still done manually. A Cognizant survey of senior business and technology leaders showed that respondents believe they are automating between 25 percent and 40 percent of their workflows. Automation has occurred in workflows “that follow rote procedures and manual inputs.” Cognizant believes that current technology can automate most of the more complex workflows.
Another factor is that automation often shows fast, measurable ROI. In the Cognizant study, half the respondents identified automation as significantly improving their business processes. About 20 percent saw a cost savings of more than 15 percent.
Automation and the digitization of paper documents improves security and regulatory compliance. A third of the respondents to an AIIM survey said that compliance and risk was the main consideration for implementing ECM, second only to lowering cost and improving efficiency at 40 percent.
When paper and processes go digital, you can apply analytics to the data and workflows more effectively. This provides a secondary boost in efficiency as people can find information more quickly, analyze it more thoroughly, and identify further opportunities to streamline processes.
A desire for more effective means to collaborate is another big driver, and it’s not just about taking paper out of the process. Email is still the collaboration tool of choice for many organizations, but it’s very bad at enabling it. Workers want collaboration tools that align with the workflows, provide transparency on how projects are managed, and have versioning capability.
The mobile, always connected world that we now live and work in also demands greater automation and digitization of information. Workers want to review and perform actions on documents on all their devices.
The automation of workflows and digitization of documents is only going to increase. Printing is not going away, but it’s fair to assume that print volumes will continue to decline as automation rises. This is why it’s important for dealers to sell print and document solutions that meet both the hardcopy and digital needs of customers.
