A new IDC study finds that improving document and information processes helps businesses bring new offerings to market faster, rapidly address customer needs, react more quickly to changing market dynamics, and win competitive business.
“Organisational blind spot: The role of document-driven business processes in driving top-line growth”, the study sponsored by Ricoh, found that while document processes are important to an organisation's revenue, they can have a bigger impact on time to market.
“The vast majority of the 1 516 respondents said that optimising customer-facing processes would help them improve their times to market by an average of 13%,” says Michael Barnett, MDS business manager at Ricoh SA. “Better processes enable teams closer to customers, typically sales and marketing, to quickly and accurately convey opportunities they have identified to design and development teams responsible for new product or service creation.”
Being able to supply information to the right people, at the right time and in the right format can make the difference between being a leader or a laggard and mean the success or failure of a new business initiative.
The research also found that improving processes can help sales and product development organisations create new market opportunities. Seventy-eight percent of the study's respondents said that fixing document processes would help their organisation more rapidly address customer needs; 65% said their organisations could respond more quickly to market changes; and 63% improve their competitive stance. Improved processes can also help cement customers' loyalty to an organisation and decrease the chances that they will defect to a competitor, according to the study. Companies with outstanding document processes can capitalise on the vulnerabilities of their competitors' inferior customer service.
“This is a rare bird in business today because the investment required to achieve the results is usually modest compared to the return, which can be substantial,” says Barnett.
“Managed document services (MDS) is rapidly gaining traction globally as a significant pillar that propels greater efficiencies and profitability,” says Barnett. “Businesses are increasingly acknowledging the role MDS has to play in streamlining processes to improve efficiencies and make them more competitive. Ricoh is acknowledged as a global document expert by several research firms, including Gartner and IDC, because we present ideas that drive change - but change that is relevant to the needs of our customers - and the findings of this study divulge the direction that change indicates.”
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