How to Digitize Paperwork & Establish Paperless Processing at the Workplace

Entrepreneurs, CEOs, and visionaries are fast beginning to realize the enormous benefits of digitization, especially when it comes to setting up a paperless processing system at the workplace. In fact, 85% of business owners and entrepreneurs understand how time-sensitive digitization is, and are, therefore, eager to make it a reality within the next year. To fully grasp the extent to which companies are embracing the concept of digital transformation, let’s look at a few emerging trends that have made an impression on the business landscape. 

Digitization of workflow during COVID-19

Entrepreneurs, CEOs, and visionaries are fast beginning to realize the enormous benefits of digitization, especially when it comes to setting up a paperless processing system at the workplace. In fact, 85% of business owners and entrepreneurs understand how time-sensitive digitization is, and are, therefore, eager to make it a reality within the next year. 

To fully grasp the extent to which companies are embracing the concept of digital transformation, let’s look at a few emerging trends that have made an impression on the business landscape. 

Digitization of workflow during COVID-19

Soon after the onset of the pandemic and the ensuing lockdown, businesses were forced to rethink their strategies to keep their company running. As a result, 2021 has seen quite a few changes in how companies handle workflows to tackle the various challenges. 

As such, let’s look at some of the major trends that have shaped the financial year of 2020-2021. 

1. The growth rate of digitization in the post-COVID era

With the workplace dynamic being replaced by a work-from-home culture as a result of the initial lockdown and subsequent social distancing measures, companies have had to accelerate digitization in their company workflow. In addition, the second wave has more or less cemented the idea of remote work being a permanent solution for the unforeseeable future. 

Although digitization was well on its way to making a mark even before the pandemic in 2020, recently published reports suggest that digital transformation was expected to increase by a mere 10.4 percent worldwide. 

On the other hand, once COVID-19 became a problem for businesses globally, key decision-makers and business leaders have witnessed firsthand how digital transformation has accelerated since. As a result, businesses across the globe are beginning to use digitization tools to increase operational efficiency, communication, and collaboration to improve their company dynamics. 

2. Investment in digitization 

Several industries such as the healthcare industry, logistics, insurance, and finance industries are implementing automation tools to complete tasks specific to them. 

When it comes to aspects of management, such as that of the supply chain, industries linked to manufacturing, retail, and logistics are keen on embracing automation tools to digitize the supply chain. 

According to a recent survey, 41% of businesses have already made significant investments in automation technology. Other recent reports indicate that warehouse automation is the foremost supply chain operation tool that major companies are investing in, accounting for a whopping 53%. 

Artificial intelligence is another aspect of digitization that businesses are eager to devote their time to in order to invest in it eventually. As per a survey conducted by MarketMuse, 80% of the IT sector want to learn about the costs of implementing AI-backed technology in enterprises, and 69% of them want to learn about the ways through which they can measure the Return of Investments for AI-based solutions. 

3. Different industries adopting digitization at different rates

Although the retail sector alongside financial institutions have been the frontrunners in taking advantage of digital technology, recent studies suggest that several others, such as that of the mining sector and manufacturing firms, have found a way to adopt digitization in quite an ambitious way. 

With the introduction of devices powered by the Internet of Things (IoT) as well as mobile-enabled tools, enterprises are beginning to shift their focus onto procuring usage-based operating systems. 

When it comes to the finance and accounting industry, accounting departments are embracing the idea of bank statement automation software to simplify and swiftly process tasks that otherwise consume a lot of time and effort. 

Diving deeper into the implementation of automation technology, recent reports reveal that automation is a major contributor to the logistics industry. So much so that if recent market projections are anything to go by, the logistics automation market is estimated to reach a whopping USD 80.64 billion by the year 2023. 

Aspects of business that can be digitized

While a few enterprises are accustomed to digitizing a number of their external as well as internal business processes - as much of their operations rely heavily on automation technology - AI-backed tools, and so on, most other businesses embrace digital transformation as a strategic measure. 

But how can companies make strategic decisions to simplify and automate aspects of their existing processes? Let’s find out. 

1. Document Processing

As businesses grow and prosper, they tend to accumulate a ton of paperwork with more and more files and documents that need to be reorganized and accessed swiftly and seamlessly. 

While most companies worry about whether their important documents might get exposed and end up in the wrong hands, others find it difficult to manage company files that take hours to input manually. 

How does Digitization Help?

With the aid of a document processing tool, companies can digitize paper files for various aspects of their business - whether it is to do with logistics, processing a company’s bank statements, or even digitizing paper documents such as tax forms. 

If the logistics department of a manufacturing enterprise can automate its shipping labels in place of a manual shipping label format, you stand to gain a lot in terms of turnaround time as well as accuracy. 

2. Data Analytics

When it comes to workflows, the internal and external processes of organizations, data analytics has made significant headway as a result of digitization. Consequently, the collection, inspection, and classification of data is no longer a manual task that takes ages. 

Businesses have been able to automate much of these processes through the introduction of various software automation tools. These tools allow enterprises to verify information, secure it, and develop strategies to improve the operational functions of businesses as a result. Here's a look at a few:

3. Bank statement analysis

Since financial institutions have hundreds of loan applications coming in on a daily basis, the task of measuring the credit and understanding whether an applicant is eligible for a loan can become tedious.

With the introduction of data processing tools and OCR technology, companies can analyze bank statements, complete insurance data processing tasks, and get rid of errors without a hitch. 

4. Logistics

Through digitization, businesses, especially manufacturing enterprises, don’t have to worry about extracting data from thousands of invoices and purchase orders for hours on end. Through paperless invoice processing and other automated logistics tools, companies can complete such tasks within the span of a few minutes. 

5. Accounts Payable

Keeping track of accounts payable, especially for conglomerates and companies with subsidiaries across the world, is a difficult task.

As such, having to rely on outdated software to ensure that you’re paying your vendors on time and are receiving your supplies on time would be a near-impossible feat without automated invoice processing, and OCR technology to guide you.

6. Information Sharing 

As technology constantly evolves, so does the threat to security. Since it is crucial for businesses to be able to share important company information, whether it is between the workforce or with external clients, doing so over a non-secure network would prove costly, security-wise. 

Through automation, businesses can access information from one secure, central location, allowing employees to access it from anywhere in the world without worrying about it reaching the wrong hands. 

7. Customer Service 

Businesses that provide goods and services to consumers require a strong customer relationship service if they have any hopes of profiting from their venture. If you want your customer to take you seriously, you have to take certain steps to ensure that they feel valued. 

Companies need to make strategic movies, like treating each customer in a personalized way instead of clubbing them into a group. But how can businesses do that when they're dealing with hundreds or even thousands (if you're a conglomerate) of customers on a daily basis? 

This is where automation comes in - A CRM software that is capable of managing the likes and preferences of a variety of individuals by accessing customer information through the data gathered from emails, calendars, and product preferences is one way to go about it.

Moreover, companies need an efficient Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool to maintain a good relationship with customers and create a sense of loyalty towards a brand. An efficient CRM software can accomplish this by collecting, organizing, and managing customer information as and when they come in. 

8. Inventory Management

One of the biggest problems of inventory management is delivering goods and services to customers in a timely manner. If businesses are constantly serving hundreds of customers at once, keeping track of the inventory becomes difficult, especially if all the paperwork is handled manually. 

With the automation of a business’s inventory, companies can keep a complete record of all their products that are being stored in their warehouses. Through this digitization, customers can access information regarding said products on company websites. This way, customers are always informed about the availability of stock and make purchases accordingly. 

Instead of manually feeding inventory data on spreadsheets and keeping tabs on employees to obtain this information, companies can rely on automated systems to do this work for them, effectively completing it hours before schedule. 

How Docsumo Can Help you Digitize Your Business

If companies want to stay ahead of the competition and stay relevant in an ever-evolving market, it is incumbent to run efficient and streamlined processes. 

As businesses often rely on gathering and extracting data, much of the tasks that were earlier performed manually, spending tedious hours on manual data entry and extraction can now be performed seamlessly, and in a matter of minutes with automated data capture systems.

1. Seamless Automated Data Extraction

With our intelligent OCR technology, businesses can perform end-to-end data processing. Docsumo’s intelligent OCR API is reliable with over 99% accuracy in data extraction. 

If you want to extract information from PDF files that round up to about a dozen in number, the task can be managed manually. But if you are dealing with hundreds of documents everyday, you need a bulk document upload tool that can classify and organize files within a few clicks. Docsumo does that automatically for you. 

The best part about digitizing paper files is the fact that the processing speed is 10 times faster than that of manual processing. 

2. Analytics

Company’s financial analysts and decision makers no longer have to comb through and extract information such as the cash flow, ROI potential of an investment, and variables affecting the probability of fraud manually. Organizations can instead save much time and energy and automate this process with Docsumo and focus on making better decisions for their businesses. With Docsumo, organizations can compile and subsequently compute massive amounts of data without worrying about making errors. 

3. Fraud Detection in Real-time

In this digital age, it is no longer enough for companies to be able to detect duplicitous activities after the fact since sensitive information like bank details or credit card information could be stolen at a moment’s notice. With Docsumo’s AI and its machine learning tools, insurance companies, as well as financial institutions, can detect fraudulent activities in real-time. 

Wrapping Up

Essentially, businesses across the globe are embracing the idea of digitization. If they have not implemented automation tools already, many of them are already on their way to establish a process that is relevant to their business. 

The pandemic only accelerated the eventual establishment of a more digitized world where document processing manually is soon going to become a thing of the past.