Is your organization still manually processing documents, from emails to invoices to HR paperwork? If so, you’re likely missing out on revenue and wasting resources on tasks that could be more efficiently handled with Enterprise Content Management.
“Enterprise Content Management doesn’t just deal with documents but with all types of information content, from the web to emails, snail mail, blogs, wiki, etc., that drive organizational decisions,” says Ben Simms, Vice President, Blue Technologies Inc. “It automates nonvalue-added tasks and keeps information flowing seamlessly throughout your organization.”
Smart Business spoke with Simms about how integrating enterprise content management into your organization can decrease costs, improve efficiency and drive more revenue to your bottom line.
Why should an organization consider Enterprise Content Management?
It brings a value proposition to any corporation or organization, private, public or nonprofit. Every organization makes decisions based on the manner in which information is available. As the market becomes more data driven, this becomes increasingly important. Enterprise Content Management helps manage your operations more effectively, efficiently and productively.
Many organizations still work in an analogue fashion by printing out data, manually disseminating, filing and managing it. But a completely digital system allows you to control the data and eliminate duplicate work and the superfluous clutter that hinders you from making the best decisions. This is more critical than ever, as the pandemic has pushed people into work-from-home strategies, impacting the ability to get information in a timely fashion in order to make decisions that could impact their bottom lines.
Enterprise content management minimizes or eliminates the need for human intervention in routine decisions with encryption while the content is at rest, as well as in transit, eliminating risk exposure. This allows you to do more with less. The biggest cost of goods is a human cost. Eliminating nonvalue-added time required to manage hard-copy data and reallocating that work to revenue-generating activities ensures the bottom line becomes healthier.
How can an organization start to transition to enterprise content management?
Start with a conversation with outside experts to identify your biggest obstacles and pain points, whether that is bottlenecks, redundancies or something else. Assess those areas to identify the current state of operations, what infrastructure is in place to obtain maximum leverage of your current IT infrastructural investment. It’s important to look not only at the current state but begin to map out what is your future desired state. Because the technology is extremely scalable, organizations can minimize their capital outlay, while reaping a quick return by focusing on one pain point at a time. As that area shows a return, move on to other areas to grow and maximize your investment.
Can organizations realize a return on investment?
A return on investment can be almost immediately recognized, and for many, the initial investment is less than half the cost of one full-time employee. For example, accounts payable departments are mostly reliant on hard copy documents. Enterprise Content Management allows you to control processes by moving the content throughout your organization while infusing them programmatically with your business rules and policies so you do not have to rely on first in, first out. As a result of this more efficient way of managing your data you regain control over your AP. This allows you to take advantage of net terms to renegotiate supplier contracts to get better discounts.
Start small and grow to enterprise fashion. What would it mean if HR could decrease onboarding time and automate new hire paperwork?. Instead of new hires filling out forms with the same information, they can fill out one master form that auto-populates all forms, finishing in a tenth of the time.
By having more, up-to-date information on hand, organizations can make better decisions, eliminate errors resulting from manual input and return revenue to their bottom lines.
Insights Technology is brought to you by Blue Technologies
