Document digitisation: a crucial enabler of the digital enterprise
By clinging to the old habits of print, sign and scan, we're breaking the digital chain and inhibiting the organisation's ability to become digitally fluent. Electronic signatures can help bridge this gap.
There are a number of benefits, aside from the efficiency gains of moving to fully-digital document management solutions that include signature automation:
• Data security - with tools like multi-factor authentication, password managers, strong policies, and vigilant monitoring, companies can keep tighter control over the security and integrity of their documents.
• Version control - there is no ambiguity over which version of a document is the original, or which one is the most updated, for instance.
• Costs - when printing and scanning, more human intervention is inevitably involved - pushing up costs in areas like salaries, printing fees, paper, routing and storage.
• Control - physical documents carry numerous risks: they may disappear, get stolen, damaged, or accidentally destroyed. With digital solutions, this is not possible.
• Fewer dependencies - paper-based systems are inherently more dependent on other processes, both within and outside the organisation. For example, the organisation often relies on postal or couriering services, which could be avoided with the right digital approach.
Digitisation also enables companies to achieve a far richer context, relating to the history of a document - showing date-lined records of every annotation and update to the document. With paper-based or hybrid (paper and digital combined) solutions, tracking the evolution of a document is often extremely difficult or impossible.
Electronic signatures a must-have
Digitising processes are an essential step on the road to digital transformation, and adding electronic signatures is a must-have part of it. This creates the foundation for organisations to benefit from the vast array of digital advantages including:
• Collaboration within the enterprise, as well as with partners, suppliers and customers, becomes far more fluid when documents can be securely and instantly exchanged and worked on via mobile devices from wherever the individual may be.
• Decision-making is enriched by all the electronic data that is captured and processed by advanced analytics engines - giving leaders the ability to spot trends and design strategies based on solid data.
• Risk management is improved by having all company documentation securely organised into libraries that can be accessed at any point - satisfying governance requirements, requests from industry regulators, and other legal bodies.
• Innovation rates tend to ramp-up, powered by a greater number of stakeholders having access to digital information - helping employees find new, profitable business opportunities.
While incoming regulations such as the POPI (Protection of Personal Information) Act may well be the catalyst for many organisations to embrace digitisation, the other benefits noted above should be seen as equally compelling. Taken together, they make it worthwhile for any organisation to look at starting a digitisation project as soon as they possibly can.
