Document scanning and workflow automation can mean big things for your business.
With manual processes, you’ll always be at the whims of human error and forced to deal with slow reaction times or unobservant employees. Automate your process, on the other hand, and you’ll be more flexible, more accountable and more responsive to the speed of modern business than ever before.
Even better, we’ve discovered 6 instances where instituting workflow automation within your organization provides a major competitive advantage. If any of the following issues sound familiar to your organization, it’s time to think more seriously about digitizing your documents and workflow automation:
1. Moving
If your organization has outgrown its current office, then now’s the perfect time to automate. Without all those boxes and filing cabinets, you can move into a nicer building and the process itself will be much smoother, not to mention far less back-breaking. Plus, when you land at your new space, the now-paperless office can be a solid recruiting tool.
2. Growing Rapidly
Rapid business growth is a blessing, but it brings along all sorts of issues. Mailroom scanning and workflow automation help you keep up with the increased flood of documents and invoices that must be processed, while cloud document management software allows new employees brought on either from remote locations or satellite offices secure access to everything they need.
3. Merging
Massive headaches can result when combining organizations due to bringing together multiple, often-competing systems and processes into one larger system. Automate as you go, and a new cloud-based system can be implemented for use going forward. You’ll expedite processing while allowing broader access, and if everyone learns the new system at once, no one will be left behind.
4. Compliance, Grievances, and Audits
Perhaps no single aspect of your business will be more helped by an automated office than regulatory compliance. From security to archiving, audit response to authorization controls, workflow automation makes your compliance process so much easier to handle. The quicker you can find something, and the surer you are that everything is tracked and as it should be, the better.
5. Broken Processes
You know which processes in particular hamstring your business. If documents get stuck in turn-around, or are routinely filed incorrectly, or your staff simply cannot stay on top of invoices and the mailroom, it’s time to automate. The manual approach is hopelessly stuck in the past, but automate your process and the errors and issues it forces your organization to deal with can be, too.
6. Buried in Paper
Accounts payable processes, order fulfillment, and HR on-boarding are dependent on timeliness and orderly files. When you can’t count on either due to volume overload, you need workflow automation with document scanning and document management software. There’s no shame in admitting your organization is buried in paperwork; just don’t let the situation go unresolved. Setting up workflow automation helps your business dig out and move on to bigger and better things.