The focus of this article is to help you in your role within your organisation to answer this key question. If you are a Finance Manager, an IT Manager, or a Records Manager, you will get your answer to this burning question!
What is digital transformation?
First we start with what we define as digital transformation as there are so many definitions out there!
We mean the use of digital technology to improve your organisation’s efficiency and provide a much better experience for both employees & customers. Focusing on the use of information and records within organisations, digital technology can deliver great value through easier and faster access to real time relevant & accurate data, both for the employee and the customer.
Benefits for a Finance Manager
There are probably several processes dealing with financial paperwork that need transforming within your organisation! Let’s take your Accounts Payable process as an example, where the receipt, data entry, approval and payment process can be quite cumbersome and error prone if it is highly manual.
However, if you automate the process for receiving & approving invoices through digital scanning into your accounting system, which in turn initiates an automatic approval workflow process to check against related purchase orders and receiving documents which are digitally stored, then great efficiencies can be obtained. These can include:
- Reducing data entry burden which provides significant cost reduction
- Reducing the risk of making costly duplicated payments
- Providing a process that addresses incomplete or incorrect invoices
- Allowing for accepting discounts or avoiding penalties as a result of improved process cycle times
- Reducing vendor relationship issues due to lost invoices or late payments
- Delivering organisational scalability which allows for varying volumes and growth
- Reducing basic human errors and providing a much more enjoyable work environment for Accounts Payable team members
Benefits for an IT Manager
Driving process efficiencies and ensuring business continuity are likely to be a key focus of your role with regard to the flow & management of information within your organisation.
As such the use of business process automation to replace inefficient manual and paper-based processes by integrating digital tools, automating hand-offs, and replacing other repetitive, time-consuming tasks with automated digital processes, can be a real winner in helping you to meet your targets. With less manual work involved, efficiency goes up as does your organisation’s ability to continue functioning through the next major disruption requiring remote working.
The benefits of introducing automated digital processes and tools are quite numerous and include:
- Business process automation that increases efficiency and improves control by enforcing corporate policies.
- Analytics that drive greater visibility into process efficiency and areas for improvement.
- Automatic import, escalations and scheduled event capability that reduce manual tasks and human error.
- Ability to capture virtually any kind of document or content through multiple digital means.
- Connecting documents and data to other enterprise systems, which users need to complete their work.
- Granular metadata searches for specific documents, with the ability to search across an entire document repository or view related documents with a single click.
- Seamless, device agnostic mobile access to allow workers to access documents wherever, whenever and however they want.
Benefits for a Records Manager
If your organisation, like many others, still has lots of paper-based records lying about the office, then no doubt you are likely to be looking into ways of storing and accessing these records in a more efficient way – Enter digital technology to transform all this! Digitally scanning paper documents to capture information electronically provides multiple & simultaneous users with readily available information and the ability to locate important information in seconds.
Aside from a more efficient and timely way in which to access stored documents and information, document imaging and storage also enables companies to set security access for the more important information. Various levels of access can be created for digital documents, ensuring confidential documents are not accessed by those who should not have access, or fall into the wrong hands.
Converting paper-based information to digitally stored and managed images has a wide range of benefits for all organisations, including:
- Increasing productivity by reducing time spent looking for files or documents
- Minimising the costs associated with hard copy storage, distribution, printing, and delivery
- Preserving the life of important but fragile paper records by stopping constant handling
- Gaining instant access to highly searchable data with online archives of your documents
- Complying with security regulations and best practices
- Digital backups as a means of disaster recovery planning
- Providing a faster and more effective customer experience
How can Compu-Stor and its Digital Transformation Division help?
It can be quite daunting to launch an internal project for driving digital transformation in your internal information & records management, but this is where Compu-Stor with its over 30 years of experience can advise you and support you throughout this important initiative.
From document, media & data storage to digital scanning, business process automation and consulting services, Compu-Stor provides a wide range of solutions using the latest technologies & methodologies to deliver secure & efficient services.
Through its Digital Transformation Solutions Division, Compu-Stor helps maximise the accessibility and flow of information within organisations. With offices across Australia, Compu-Stor works with its customers to provide cost-effective solutions tailored to their needs.
Give us a call today for a free initial exchange to see how we can help you: 1800 860 604
