Mind your (core) business & grow

There's a proverb that says old habits die hard. This is certainly true in business. Even though the world has gone digital, many organizations are still drowning in paper documents, records, unstructured data and semi-structured formats with no ability to convert it all into useful, accessible and searchable information.

These paper pileups and data disconnects disrupt your daily operations and take up a significant amount of your time and resources every day. When you consider how often this can happen across your entire organization, the true impact of paper and disconnected data quickly becomes clear. As an example, take a peek into the day of a life at the fictional company Customer First Corp.

Accounts payable

For Albert in accounts payable (AP) and his co-workers, invoicing is a daily struggle. Databases are filled with duplicates of the same vendor, listed multiple times with different contact names, addresses and account numbers. Because there is no way to identify duplicate invoices, vendors can — and sometimes do — get paid more than once.

Making matters worse, the AP department cannot pay invoices coming in from vendors who are not set up in the system and registered as approved vendors. However, no automated response notifies unregistered vendors – no link to register is provided and no instructions on how to resubmit their invoice.

Digital transformation

To stay competitive and relevant, Customer First Inc. reinvents the entire business process, including:

• Cutting the number of manual steps required.

• Reducing the number of documents.

• Developing automated decision-making.

• Dealing with regulatory and fraud issues.

We are living through a fundamental transformation in the way we work. This isn't a time to sit back and wait for events to unfold. This isn't about some 'far future' of work — change is already happening and accelerating.

Digital transformation sweeps across all of these functions of the company, making it a mammoth initiative that Customer First Inc. isn't prepared to take on alone.

Obstacles include the amount of time, resources, money and technology needed make digital transformation a reality — all of which distract from core competencies. The future isn't a fixed destination. Plan for a dynamic rather than a static future.