Digitize Everything That Moves or Risk Revenge of the Cranky Old Man

We've all done it. Admit it. Tearful confessions are the first step to forgiveness. And an appearance on Oprah.

No, not sex, drugs, or rock-n-roll. I'm talking about pulling rank on the IT people, coming in with a great idea you thought of over the weekend, and convincing everybody to roll it out as quickly as possible. To push out that new "System of "Engagement" and damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.

Except for one thing. True customer engagement is more than just creating a social veneer. Because once you bring the customer into the business, once they truly engage, all of the weaknesses of your back end systems and processes will be exposed.

The reality of most organizations is that there is a lot of cleaning up to be done in core backend processes. We've all experienced the irritation of keying in our phone number or account number multiple times in a call response system, only have the very first question asked by a customer service representative (assuming we get one) be, "Can you tell me your phone number?"

I won't even go into the recent customer experiences that generated the following tweets (company names masked to protect the guilty; my wife calls these my old man rants):

@Jmancini77 - 1:40 pm via HootSuite - If someone doesn’t contact me today and let me end run your #Satanic call center, I’m blogging tomorrow @xxxxx

@Jmancini77 - 3:40 pm via HootSuite - This is Day 87 that I am held hostage by @xxxxx’s ridiculous #mortgage refinance process. Please call.

No matter how elegant the front-end, Systems of Engagement cannot operate in an environment in which the processes that support and complement them are engulfed by paper and inefficiency. The reality is that most organizations exist in a hybrid environment in which process information may come from paper documents, paper forms, web forms, faxes, emails, SMS, mobile, and social.

Automated capture as early as possible in the business process produces cleaner data, resulting in higher quality information, less exception handling, and better process management. The more important the process is to a business, the greater the impact such improvements will have.

Forms processing is a particularly important element in process automation. Forms -- both electronic and paper -- are used to collect data, to carry signatures, to drive the business process, and to provide an auditable record of the outcome. Each of these can be readily carried out in all-electronic formats, but until recently, the paper form has been somewhat stubborn in its hold on even the most modern offices.

A few data points illustrate the reality that exists in most organizations:

• The median cost to process a paper invoice is still > $9.
• Overall, 52% of organizations surveyed have yet to adopt any automated AP systems. One-third of organizations receiving more than 25,000 invoices per month are still using paper-based processes.
• A third of small and mid-sized companies and 22% of the largest have yet to adopt any paper-free processes. Only 20% of any size orgs pro-actively evaluate all processes for driving out paper.
• Median % of processes that could be paper-free that actually are = 14%.
• On average, 45% of documents that are scanned are 100% “born digital” – just as they came from the printer. And many of the rest would be all-digital if not for the added signatures.
• 77% of invoices that arrive as PDF attachments get printed. 31% of faxed invoices get printed and scanned back in.
• For 40% of organizations, half or more of their electronic workflows are interrupted by physical sign-offs, generally requiring multiple paper copies to be printed.

Perhaps the most astonishing thing about true progress relative to digitizing processes is how compelling the existing results are relative to the lack of progress outlined above.

• Electronic-only filing would halve the storage space needed for paper in 5 years. The average proportion of office space taken up by paper is now 15.3%, and it would drop to 7.4% with an all-electronic filing policy, a saving of nearly 8% in overall office costs.
• 61% of Accounts Payable system users report a payback period of 12 months or less. 77% consider they have achieved a payback of 18 months or less. A significant 20% report a payback in as little as 6 months.
• The median cost per invoice to process is $9. Costs reported range from less than $2 to more than $30, with an average of $11.6. Half of survey respondents are processing 5,000 or more invoices per month. At this level, a 33% saving at $10 per invoice is $200,000 per year.
• On average, respondents using scanning and capture consider that it improves the speed of response to customers, suppliers, citizens, or staff by 6-times or more. 70% estimate an improvement of at least 3-times, and nearly a third (29%) see an improvement of 10-times or more.
• 42% of users have achieved a payback period of 12 months or less from their scanning and capture investments. 57% are posting a payback of 18-months or less.

The business needs to demand that we ruthlessly drive paper out of every process we can find. It must demand that we view the connections between systems with as much rigor as we view the individual systems themselves. It must demand that once we drive paper out, we keep it out. It must demand that we automate just enough, but not too much.