Business Process Management (BPM)
In “The State of Intelligent Information Management: Getting Ahead of the Digital Transformation Curve,” AIIM made the case that every organization is on – or should be on! – a Digital Transformation journey. The heart of this Transformation journey is understanding, anticipating, and redefining internal and external customer experiences. AIIM believes that Digital Transformation effectiveness is imperiled by a rising tide of information chaos and confusion and that rising tide of information chaos and confusion is creating a demand for new information management practices that extend beyond traditional Enterprise Content Management.
Our research in the State of the Industry report identified Digitalizing Core Organizational Processes as currently the most important of the 4 practice areas for organizations relative to achieving their Digital Transformation goals, and so our objective in this Industry Watch was to probe more deeply into how organizations view process automation and to determine whether the reality of their current efforts is enough to achieve true Digital Transformation.
Our research leads to these three core findings:
- True Digital Transformation requires more than just digitizing back end processes.
- Many organizations have yet to do the very basic work of process automation, putting them at a severe disadvantage in their efforts to embrace Digital Transformation. Despite the relative maturity of many core process improvement technologies, there is still a significant market opportunity here for solution providers, although this kind of basic process standardization should not be confused with true Digital Transformation.
- New technologies – like Robotic Process Automation, Blockchain, Low and No-code Process Engines, and Intelligent Capture – open up opportunities to not only improve process, but to totally rethink them.
Most organizations and departments have a mandate to continuously improve operations. A conventional change agenda involves better tools and technology, better behaviors, and better processes; all focused on generating better efficiencies and improved productivity.
In disruptive times, process efficiency is a necessary but not sufficient condition for Digital Transformation. Ultimately, AIIM believes Digital Transformation is more than conventional change. Digital Transformation is about doing things differently – and doing different things as well. And different not just for the sake of being different, but in support of the key strategic objectives facing every organization in the age of digital disruption.
That’s why we believe the core IIM process challenge for organizations as digitalizing core business processes rather than just digitizing them. Digitization of manual and paper-intensive processes has long been shown to increase efficiency. Digitalization goes beyond digitizing the steps in a workflow and is all about redesigning the business as a digital business, not just improving what you currently have.
The best approach in addressing this transformation is to view it as a journey from the current ways of doing business to a new digital state, based on intelligent information management (IIM) practices that integrate people, process, information and technology in support of achieving greater operational efficiency, meeting regulatory and legal compliance, enabling more agility to change, and enhancing the customer experience.
Key Findings
- 82% of organizations are comfortable with the term “Digitalizing Core Business Processes” as a description of the broad process challenges that lie ahead.
- 75% of organizations view process automation as “important” or “very important” to their organization.
