How do you transform your content-intensive business processes? Here's a 10-point action list:
Question long-held assumptions that paper is essential in your business for legal compliance. Research others in your industry. Consult your auditors.
Highlight the role that paper-free processes can play in your key business improvement initiatives.
Audit those existing processes that utilize scanning and electronic workflows. Ensure that they are taking full advantage of the possibilities of OCR, data capture, and integration with core enterprise processes.
Take a quick audit of where poor access to information is hurting the business - trapped on paper, spread over file shares, locked up in enterprise systems, or simply mobile-unfriendly. Use this to energize your content management project. The more content you can converge into a single, searchable, mobile-accessible system, the fewer other places you need to go to solve the problem.
Take stock of your current ECM and DM systems and consider migrating content and consolidating. Modern auto-classification and migration products can take much of the pain out of selecting which content to recover from legacy systems, re-aligning the metadata on the way.
Physical signatures and legal admissibility are given as the biggest paper-free concerns amongst staff, with Legal Counsel, and to an extent Finance, being most resistant.
A great place to start is with these processes: HR, accounts payable and customer correspondence
Consider whether any of your current ECM systems are truly fit for purpose. If they are limited in core functional areas we, or are not well matched to your specific industry requirements or need massive customization, then consider consolidating around a new, better-suited system.
Look to integrate the ECM system with your other key enterprise or line-of-business systems to provide a single sign-on access point, centralized records management, and process integration.
If you are unsure of your expertise or need some external influence to kick-start paper-free processes, consult a document process outsourcer and tap into their experience in your industry.