When focusing on effective digital transformation and the journey to cloud computing, there are four key business areas every organisation should consider. Do you understand what problem you are trying to solve? If solved, what efficiency gains will you achieve? Can you track and audit automated processes in a way that ensures compliance with your organisation’s governance guidelines and statutory requirements? Lastly, are you convinced of the real business benefits versus the investment?
“We recently migrated our ERP onto a cloud-based platform and we learned from our experience that defining upfront what business processes need to be delivered, in a compliant way, is key,” David Preston, MD of Canon South Africa, explains.
Once defined, securing your data is imperative to all organisations, big and small. With the POPIA Act fully under way, all organisations must be compliant and enable all processes within the business to be audited. “You need to ensure you have transparency and that your records meet external and compliance requirements,” Preston emphasises.
Improving efficiency is another priority. If staff struggle to access data, their efficiency will be impacted. Quick, easy and seamless access to data promotes collaboration between departments and individuals.
Within any organisation, there are repetitive tasks to be done involving data, which are often unpopular jobs, but it is critical they are done accurately. “Canon can offer various solutions, using technology to streamline these tasks. Whether you are looking for technology to capture, archive or retrieve, we have a product that does it, and does it simply,” Preston says.
Most people in organisations are not hugely knowledgeable about IT, yet Canon’s products are very user-friendly, even junior staff can use it with ease. It works together in synergy with hardware, simplifying the retrieval of records.
Retrieving information quickly is essential for any organisation and this is where Canon has excellent capability. “The ‘Therefore’ information management software is a great product, designed to increase productivity. Paper-intensive processes can be transformed into digital documents, stored in the cloud and allocated in a way that optimises the workflow,” Preston explains. “It means that you can allocate responsibility to a more junior person, while being assured that all the correct steps are taken and that the document is traceable, and that its storage respects local and national government regulations.”
Canon is, of course, a significant force in the printing industry and printing is the most portable vehicle for taking content from place to place. However, all printed documents need to be recorded digitally. An organisation needs to be able to track where it goes and have the capacity to link hardware and software together, and that is where Canon’s value-add comes in.
“With a vendor like Canon, it is easy to integrate hardware and software. Having different products from different vendors is often a digital minefield. Organisations need to keep it simple and investigate the core expertise that a software vendor can provide. Make sure it is symbiotic and integrated to allow the journey to be seamless,” Preston advises.
The IT world is complex and Preston passionately believes that it must be led by business. “Having gone through a large-scale transformation recently with an ERP, we were reminded that it is a business transformation project, not an IT project. It is IT’s role to meet the requirements of the business, not IT to tell us how to run the business. Having said that, you can’t customise too much, or it may complicate upgrading to newer versions, so it’s about striking a balance,” he emphasises.
Finally, Preston’s advice is to ensure that your team has the training and support they need. “Digital transformation can be intimidating, even for experienced people, so never forget the human dimension to the digital journey,” he says.
First published in Brainstorm magazine.
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