Digital transformation might be a buzzword you’re hearing at every industry event you go to at the moment (along with GDPR), but it’s for a good reason.

While not altogether a new concept, digital transformation is being made possible by advances in technology and new ways to make current paper based processes more efficient.

Business processes have involved paper for a long time and if you’re business has been running for more than a few months, paper processes aren’t just something you can scrap overnight. However, with some thought in place, it’s possible to remove processes that are currently time consuming and difficult to manage.

In this case, we’re talking about document management.

Where/how does your company currently file paper?

How often do you have to go to the cupboard in the corner of your office or the filing cabinet to file a piece of paper that will never be looked at again?

Worse still, when you do eventually need that piece of paper from 2 years ago, you’ve got to spend an hour trying to find it because someone put it in the wrong file or it’s got a stack of other boxes on top.

We then have the paper that’s never actually filed, unless you count the bin as filing. If it’s going in the bin, did it really need to be printed? At the time, possibly.

In light of these inefficient processes, digital transformation promises to make life easier. Or so it seems...

Creating a digital landfill

The trouble is, certain processes that were inefficient on paper aren’t always being properly digitalised, making them just as inefficient in a digital format. Okay, so maybe not as inefficient as at least documents can be searched for when in digital format.

But the point still stands - if you recognise that processes are currently inefficient, then the idea behind digitalisation should be to improve them, not replicate them in a different format.

By digitising every paper document you have without first assessing it, you’re creating a digital landfill of documents that aren’t needed and will never be viewed again.

What documents should you digitise?

To some extent, the answer to this question will be unique to every business based on a range of factors from the age of the business to the type of business you run.

For example, if your organisation has been around for 70 years and you’re still keeping meeting agendas filed away from 30+ years ago, you can probably get away with not digitising these.

When assessing what should be digitised, think about the type of document and how it will be used in the future. Financial and HR documents might be crucial to keep, at least for a certain amount of time that complies with any regulations on these documents.

However, marketing contacts that were printed out 10 years ago where the data is most likely out of date might be something you leave off the list for digitalisation.

While not an easy job, assessing paper documents to digitise is a crucial part of digital transformation. For some processes it will be easy as you’ll be aware of the documents that are needed often and are accessed regularly (printing/scanning/copying analytics should help to show this), whereas legal documents may need some consulting to see how and why it needs to be kept.

The benefits of digitising paper documents can be great as employees accessing the documents can save time and costs and it can allow for more remote and flexible working as employees don’t need to be in the office to access the documents they need.

Contact Xenith and find out which processes you could digitise.