Imagine you’ve got an unhappy customer on the line. An important customer that wants to quit your service and go to a competitor. The trick to winning that customer over and keeping them happy is not just to fix their immediate problem, but to find a way to form new, enduring bonds with them.
One thing I have learned working with customers is that automating and making your workflows isn’t just about making work faster, but finding new, better ways to do business. When most people talk about the benefits of managed content, it’s usually simply about making your business more efficient. Efficiency is important, but the deeper truth is that intelligent management of your content can boost productivity, make your job easier and impress customers in new and unexpected ways.
In fact, the best part of document automation is more than just improved efficiency. Efficiency is great and the obvious benefit to document automation ("It used to take me 1 hour to finalize an invoice, now it takes 5 minutes. Huzzah!"), but this is just the beginning.
BUILDING BETTER RELATIONSHIPS WITH ECM
Imagine you are an insurance company and need to take and process claims from hundreds or thousands of people every day. To handle these requests, you build an app that guides customers through questions that generates a report. If built using the latest document automation and artificial intelligence technology, the app can learn to treat claims involving property damage different from medical claims. It can also identify clients who may need additional coverage or services.
Document automation allows a business to provide services to customers that don't yet know they need a particular service and then escalate the relationship. The same tech that can make you more efficiency can now generate new business leads. Instead of simply processing claims, your company could also be expanding its business.
In the end, "document automation" might be too broad a term to be useful. Perhaps "guided interviews that automate documents" might be better. But I propose something even crazier, perhaps: the real value in document automation isn’t the documents at all. It’s the data created in the aggregate that can be captured, analyzed, and then utilized.
INFORMATION OVERLOAD NO MORE
According to IBM, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day. Indeed, 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone. According AIIM, over 60% of corporate data is unstructured and a growing amount of that unstructured data is in the form of nontraditional “records” like text and social media messages, audio files, video, and images.
Information overload is why a major state university and a customer of GFC had a huge file room overflowing with paper records. The department was “drowning in paper,” with 298,150 pages, primarily leave of absence forms, employee files, and recruitment documents. Simply by scanning these documents into a Laserfiche system, the Human Resources department has eliminated almost 75 file cabinets.
But in addition to being able to track and find files, the school can now track the completion of records and forms and make most forms electronic. With Electronic Content Management (ECM), those forms are dynamic and make it possible not just to create more records, but to automate processing so people are given the right information, sent the right forms and helped to solve their needs without human intervention at all. Students and staff are much better supported and happier because their needs are met and the HR department can focus on other, more pressing tasks. Information overload suddenly becomes useful information.
THE EVOLUTION OF THE DOCUMENT
Many businesses have adopted discrete pockets of process automation – perhaps to support specific workflow or isolated departmental duties. But many key business activities continue to require manual intervention and data entry. Rather than reinvent the wheel, work to replicate the technologies, capabilities and lessons-learned in one area into other applications where automation has not yet been applied.
We may be in the middle of a global pandemic, but that doesn’t mean that organizations get a break when it comes to records management. But if your business has automated processes in place, you can be receptive not only to the needs of your remote workers, but also process improvements and workflow that improve company performance, efficiency and translate directly to the bottom line.
Check out the free guide below to learn more about ECM technology. And if you’re ready to start creating new, better workflows or making your data work for you, Contact GFC's ECM experts at the Gordon Flesch Company for a complimentary assessment of your business environment.
