The Paperless Office May Not Be A Myth, After All...

If you’re frightened by the idea of completely eliminating paper from your work and switching completely to digital – be afraid, be very, very afraid.

According to a new study by Xerox, by 2018, less than 10 per cent of business processes will rely on paper. That’s less than two years from now.

The report, entitled “Digitisation of Work”, surveyed 600 IT decision-makers from North America and West Europe. In it, it says that cost (42 per cent) and security (42 per cent) are primary issues with paper-based processes. It also predicts that an average of nine per cent of key business operation processes will run on paper in the next two years.

Hello, automation!

It’s all about automation of business processes, really, and three quarters have already identified key areas – accounting, expense reporting, accounts payable and customer care.

But we’re not quite there, yet – 55 per cent said their organisations’ processes are still largely paper-based, and 29 per cent are still communicating with end customers via paper.

“Organisations foresee a lean and agile digital future but current business processes are still weighed down by paper,” said Andy Jones, vice president, Workflow Automation, Large Enterprise Operations, Xerox. “The disconnect between an organisation’s vision and the steps required to achieve successful digital transformation has stalled the promise of digitisation.”

Xerox has listed a few basic things businesses need to do to switch to full digital:

• Implement solutions for the mobile workforce (40 per cent have not yet done it)
• Improve cloud services (47 per cent are lacking)
• Integrate predictive analysis through big data (45 per cent have not yet done it).

Author: Sead Fadilpašic
View the original article here.
Published under license from ITProPortal.com