A while ago, ‘disruption’ was a big buzz word in the media. Every innovator was looking to cause disruption with the status quo, and while it was unsettling, this unsettlement was designed to create more attention and thought around the factors of the disruption.
We were looking at cause-and-effect and prompted to recognize that disruption was good.
Well, it was and it still is. Disruption is the earmark of change – and it especially impacts people who are reluctant to change. I’m not talking about the Early Adopters out there, I’m talking about the people who either maintain the ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ mentality or the unaware.
Digital Transformation (DX) has been bantered around a lot – and, depending on the context, it applies differently to each situation. At Konica Minolta, our DX is straightforward – it revolves around taking manual operations and making them easier through automation. With our technology team and MFPs, there are enhancements that provide automatic functions that never existed before. For our Managed IT team it involves outsourcing – which is also a trend in business transformation – and having the right hardware in place to be efficient for safe, digital operations.
And, in our Content Services practice, it’s all about digitizing information or taking digital content and allowing for storage, access, security, workflow and a host of other functions that are designed to make business process operations simplified and more efficient. We are truly creating a digital platform for our customers by connecting all of these digital solutions together.
THAT FIRST STEP
For many of us, our personal lives have been disrupted by digital technologies. Take for example your home – is there a digital thermostat, door locks, lights that you can control from your smartphone? Do you have a voice-activated assistant that you can tell what to do around your house, put items on your store list or even buy things without interacting with a device? The digital disruption for our personal lives is knocking on the door for our businesses to transform.
In our Content Services group, we see it as no longer an option to plan to digitally evolve; we see it as a necessary evolution to stay relevant to stay in business. So what if it causes some disruption. After this past year and now our current year of unplanned events and a total change of how we work, I think everyone can easily identify it will be necessary to drive a digital platform and embrace ‘disruption.’
As you look to transform, we encourage any business that is looking to digitize to have a solid baseline with their information: their records and their intake of paper and content. One, you want to have an accessible and secure way to preserve and archive, and two, you want to make sure the way you will be working in the future is thought-out and considers how you capture, route and access the paper ingestion in your workplace.
THE KEYS TO DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
The Konica Minolta Business Process Outsourcing segment of the Content Management practice handles scanning and planning for how to address paper pre- and post-pandemic. This breaks out into three very simple concepts:
Each has specific merits and WILL disrupt your operations for a little while, but in the end will be a huge benefit. Digitization must happen before Digital Transformation can occur.
Backfile Document Scanning – If you oversee records or an archive and the paper or other physical media fills a room, or two, you can truly identify the challenge to find documents in a your office or a remote work environment. It is tough to find the information you need quickly when you have to dig through files or boxes or can’t access them because you are working from home instead of the office. Why encourage this waste of time when digitization gives your team easier, secure access to your information in your office or remote location – and allows your employees to service their customers much faster.
Our assessment/implementation process takes into account what you do with those documents (aka utilization) so that we can co-author a content management plan that works with how your business operates. Yes, it is scanning, but it may involve more than creating a bunch of static files. In the end, you eliminate paper and gain a secure repository of digital documents.
Day-Forward Document Scanning – Now that you have taken the time to digitize your archives, keep the momentum going with a plan on how you will address the daily volume of incoming documents and let us do the work for you. Our consultants work on the digital content strategy to fit your needs – even if it evolves into a content strategy for capturing more information and enabling keyword searches. It is possible.
Digital Mail as a Service – I am sure we all know someone who has had to go to the office throughout the pandemic just to get the mail. It was necessary for business continuity. But, just think about an enterprise-size firm that has to rely on what comes in the mail. Our DMaaS is targeted at critical operations so your business keeps going. The mail comes to us, we scan and digitize the content, and we provide it back securely to the organization for processing. I think many businesses can identify with this situation after a year of remote work due to the pandemic.
This is a little harder to fathom, so you might find the above infographic helpful to explain it all.
MAJOR NOT MINOR
It may seem like a minor task – to digitize your backfiles and develop go-forward strategies – but they are disruptive. First, it takes some time and some cooperation to get the project done, and at Konica Minolta, this is not a cookie-cutter process. We conduct an assessment of your business so we know what files need to be digitized and how to organize them. We look at how you use your files to recommend how we can execute the project for each document type. It can be extensive, but because we take the time up front, and have our customers involved in every step, it is a collaborative process and a transparent process resulting in key efficiencies for our customers.
BPO SCANNING NOW
If you are still wary or reluctant to take that first step or simply want to understand how this benefits your business, our consultants are available to help, simply reach out to them at ecminfo@kmbs.konicaminolta.us. But, one other key factor you should consider is business continuity. I mentioned it only briefly earlier, but if your business sits in a zone for mudslides, floods, fires, tornados or hurricanes, the need is greater than you realize. These unplanned events can devastate your office and its contents. Thinking about that now means your business will be not be at a loss should you lose your physical office location.
And, if you are rethinking that office space, think about moving physical records – not only is that an expense on the move but the future space to store the records. No one wants to deal with destruction – but digital records and cloud services make a business able to operate on Day One.
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