Using document capture for faster business processes in a real-time economy

In a real-time economy the speed of innovation, transformation, information and service is a competitive benefit while slowness is a recipe for poor employee and customer experience, competitive disadvantages, a lack of responsiveness in customer-facing processes and slower business decisions.

The speed of business has gone up dramatically. Customers want answers now. Partners need real-time information. Knowledge workers need instant access to the information in the scope of their work and increasingly demand distributed capture solutions to be more efficient. Data capture processes and systems need to be designed, connected and optimised to achieve all these changing requirements.

Capture project priorities: the need to increase speed

Selecting the right document capture solution, from smart and fast document scanners to capture software that enables you to capture right into the process, helps you respond to this increasing demand for speed, as does enabling knowledge workers to capture information themselves.

According to AIIM’s “Paper-Free Progress: measuring outcomes” 2015 report, 27 percent of respondents cite the need to increase the speed of delivery to the next process as a capture project priority.

The research also found that improved process productivity is the second main driver for scanning and data capture, after improved searchability and/or shareability of business documents. What is a key benefit of better searchability and/or shareability ? Indeed: saving time and speeding up processes. Faster response to employees and customers ranks fourth and enabling anytime, anywhere content access (again the need for speed) fifth.

Main drivers for data capture and scanning – source AIIM

The conclusion it’s all about speed as responsiveness has truly become a competitive benefit in the age of information. So, what can you do to speed up your workflows and information-intensive processes when selecting and implementing a scanning and capture solution?

Some challenges to increase speed and efficiency of your document-intensive business processes:

• There is still too much paper and paper does slow down processes as mentioned in a previous post.
• Scanned documents and information repositories are disconnected from the line of business applications which need them to speed up decisions, customer response, worker productivity, etc.
• Besides the increasing real-time nature of the economy there is the real-time aspect of the data and information space as such: the speed at which growing volumes of information enter the business grows and the need to process it smarter and faster is a challenge.
• Knowledge workers spend a lot of time to find information which is a cost and keeps them from creating value.

Some document capture approaches to solve these challenges and increase speed and efficiency:

• Go for document scanners and capture software with intelligent and easy to use features that help you reduce errors, save time, enhance the quality of the images, are built for fast process automation and enable a flexible document capture deployment that is easy to scale across the organisation.
• Capture information fast and get it into the business process and to the right person at the right moment at the right place. Document capture at the point of entry can dramatically increase speed and ROI as cases prove.
• Use web-based capture or other methods of distributed or decentralised/transactional capture to scan closer to the source and scan better and faster into the process. Transactional capture helps you accelerate transactions involving paper documents by capturing at the point of transaction.
• Use a capture solution that is faster, enables better recognition and indexing, is easier to use and cuts data entry time.
• Put off paper at the door using a mailroom in high-volume paper and information circumstances with state-of-the art solutions. AIIM research shows the ROI of a digital mailroom can be achieved in less than 12 months for 38% of the cases
• Identify the processes where increasing speed matters most and creates the highest value in any business function. By using a process-oriented distributed capture approach you can achieve results fast and in a cost-efficient way, paving the way for other processes where paper slows you down, costs you money and is disconnected.
• Empower your knowledge workers by enabling them to capture information on the fly and bringing them closer to the content they need, regardless of the line of business applications they use or their tasks.

Want to speed up your business processes and shorten the time between input and outcome? Contact us and we’ll help you find a solution for your individual business challenge or goal.

More on the need for speed and intelligent capture in our whitepaper “The future of intelligent document capture”.

Der Beitrag Using document capture for faster business processes in a real-time economy erschien zuerst auf KnowledgeShare by Kodak Alaris Information Management.