The Benefits of Data Digitizing Services For Different Industries

There is a wide disparity in the acceptance of digital management of documents and records in businesses across the world.

Some businesses use paper forms to capture data and then transfer it to a green-screen mainframe manually. Others may use e-Forms to capture data and directly use it for their decision-making instead of wasting time with data entry.

These two examples illustrate the vast difference between organizations that have embraced digitization and those yet to.

According to a Forbes survey involving 200 business and IT executives from top companies, 85% of the people surveyed believe that data is a strategic asset for their firm, and 90% state that information access and security are vital for making strategic decisions.

However, less than a quarter of these executives understood what actions need to be taken to improve data management.

Data-related issues can cost companies an average of $5 million every year. Despite that, organizations may be reluctant to leave their safe zone of paper process and old mainframes.

They believe that digitization is an expensive process and can quickly go wrong. However, there are a number of benefits to going digital that they may be overlooking.

Digitization:

Digitization refers to the projects and processes involved in managing data in a digital form. This includes data converted from a hardcopy to a digital format and the initially digital data.

Today, customers want products and services to be efficient and fast. As a result, businesses are increasing their investments in digital initiatives.

With digitization, businesses take transformational steps to move to each new technological advancement step by step. Companies set the stepping stone for future tech applications for a continuous improvement process with each new layer.

While struggling to embrace digital trends, some businesses may move their products and services into the digital world and create new business models for them.

Common examples include innovators like Uber, PayPal, Airbnb, and more. These companies have transformed the way traditional hospitality, financial, retail and transport industries work.

Tactical Benefits Of Digitizing Your Business:

The main tactical benefit of digitization is that it can improve efficiency for your core business processes. Moreover, it improves security and productivity while reducing costs.

By storing data in a digital form, organizations can reap the following tactical advantages:

Cost And Time Saving:

Storing documents in a digital format on a cloud can help reduce storage costs. You will require less office space, folders, paper, and resources to work with physical copies.

Additionally, the process of printing, sorting, and filing is eliminated since all you need is cloud-based software to store your data.

Improved Productivity:

When you have all your essential business data available to access whenever you need it, it can improve your efficiency and performance.

Since all the employees can access data from anywhere, you can store important financial information, market data, and customer communication in one place.

With digitization, it is possible to reduce transcription errors, and you can implement electronic workflow processes for better productivity.

Data Security:

Most importantly, by storing data in an online format, you create better security for it. There are a number of vulnerability issues associated with physical documents.

By creating one source of truth for every document, there is no duplication, and you can use modern security protocols to protect your data from cyber-crime.

Strategic Benefits Of Digitization:

While digitization provides many tactical benefits that improve workflow, there are some strategic benefits too that can make it seem more viable.

By implementing a digitization strategy, executives usually want it to increase the depth of returns.

Here’s how digitization helps do just that:

Big Data:

Unless you live under a rock, you must have heard the words “big data.”

According to Gartner (Laney, 2014), Big Data refers to “high volume, high velocity and/or high variety information assets” that need to be processed in new innovative ways to make better decisions, get more insights, and optimize processes.

Big data is usually associated with the strategic benefits of digitization. It can help companies see the benefits of digitization clearly. For example, data mining can help companies understand their customers’ buying habits and more.

Not every organization has a large amount of relevant data that allows them to gain some specific benefits of big data. However, with digitization, companies have much more access to big data than ever before.

Reducing Risks:

Digitization allows for more transparency in business processes within any company.

This happens because, with digitization, companies have a single source of truth. This source is their database, which stores all relevant information.

It also allows companies to audit their workflows and have automated measures of processes and how effective they are.

Data digitization services can also help companies to have better security and apply protocols at the most minute level.

With digitization, executive members can see how any strategy will be executed, what they can achieve with it, and how well it complies with their existing policies.

This measured line of sight allows them to take on projects to improve the process and reduce the risk of non-compliance or process breakdown failures.

The Future Of Digitization:

As evidenced by the benefits above, organizations need to make conscious efforts to include digitization when creating their organizational strategies.

Every executive needs to include disruptive technologies that can help them improve their value chain and develop contingencies to use them to lead the industry.

They also need to discover gaps where they can create new value in the industry with digitization, or in other industries that will affect their own organization.

Lastly, they need to consider their business’s capacity and capability to counter the external threats and explore the opportunities that digitization brings.