Digital transformation could take place faster and more cost-effectively if organisations work from the ground up, starting with the print environment, instead of taking a top-down approach.
This is according to Jonathan Osbourne, Head of Sales at Altron Document Solutions, who says: “A lot of CIOs and CTOs look at the main platforms that drive the business and start at the top when they embark on a digitisation strategy,” he says. “Many large enterprises have a large focus on that top-down strategy, focusing on data and analytics, which eventually filters down to print.”
In contrast, Altron Document Solutions’ ground-up approach to digitisation looks at how print (paper-based data) flows within an environment to inform digitisation programmes to improve efficiency and security.
“It’s a very simple and effective strategy. We assess the input and output of information, and around 90% of that happens through multifunctional printers. So we start looking at the analytics behind how the information is coming into the organisation, where the areas of the business are, the type of data being onboarded and off-boarded, what drives processes and the compliance and efficiencies around it.
We then start at the grassroots and build up from there. From a cost perspective, because we’re cannibalising the print environment, organisations can repurpose the print budget for other digitisation initiatives.”
Osbourne says the business has identified the easiest places to start for various industry verticals. “For example, in manufacturing, you have a lot of blue-collar workers coming in using time stamps; we can digitise that process. In smaller businesses that process a lot of invoices, digitisation addresses the costs and time associated with having a team of people printing thousands of invoices, capturing, processing and archiving thousands of invoices every month. We look at the printers with the highest print and scan volumes, because that’s a clear indication of information input and output, and then we bridge the gap with digital platforms.”
Osbourne believes that print will continue to feature in office environments, but that digitisation of the environment should be embraced for greater efficiencies and savings. “The big problem is people are sceptical of digital tools that will scan, drag and drop the information into a programme with optical character recognition, extract the data into digital form, put it into workflows and archive it within a secure and compliant environment,” he says.
“There aren’t many organisations focusing on the ground-up approach to digitisation to create more efficiencies in workflows. This is due to old habits and the need for change management around digitisation on the office floor, because a lot of print is generated by human behaviour. In addition, there could be resistance to it because many people are concerned about their job security,” Osbourne says.
Smaller and mid-tier organisations in particular believe that digitisation that creates efficiencies is a time-consuming and costly exercise, he says. “But processes can be digitised and automated surprisingly quickly and cost-effectively. And if they look at the amount of time and money businesses spend on hard copy archiving and retrieval, they will see that digitising the print environment and the workflows makes a lot of sense.”
Once this environment is digitised, the business can also start harnessing analytics to make intelligent business decisions, as well as BI reporting, Osbourne notes.
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