Introduction
Digital technologies that offer productivity improvements and better customer experiences would set the stage for digital transformation. This can be easily achieved by fixing the slow document processes. Electronic document generation, distribution, and archiving is a long-drawn process that consumes valuable time and is prone to human errors. Embracing document automation as part of your digital transformation can improve efficiency and reduce errors.
Document automation is a crucial component in supporting digital transformation for organizations looking to streamline and optimize their operations. By embracing digital technologies and automating the creation, management, and processing of documents, businesses can significantly increase efficiency, accuracy, and productivity. In this article, we will explore the various ways document automation enables digital transformation, including reduced manual t, improved collaboration and communication, enhanced data accuracy and security, and the ability to scale operations effectively. With the rapid advancement of technology, document automation has become an indispensable tool for organizations across industries looking to adapt to the digital era and stay competitive in a fast-paced business landscape. Whether it's automating routine administrative tasks, digitizing document workflows, or implementing intelligent document recognition, businesses can harness the power of document automation to drive transformation and achieve greater agility, cost savings, and customer satisfaction.
Digital Transformation Journey
A digital transformation journey is not a one-step process from start to finish. There are multiple ways to approach it. Whatever be your approach - big bang digital transformation or sequential small steps, IT agility is a precondition for creating a transformative business.
An enterprise’s ability to increase efficiency and continually adapt to changes in customer preference and marketplace dynamics increases with improvements in IT agility. There are many ways this agility can manifest in a business strategy, opening up new growth opportunities and business model innovations.
To achieve this, organizations are creating loosely coupled architecture using APIs and containerized microservices. These microservices decouple functionality from the application and are independently deployable. Developers assemble these numerous single-function microservices to create applications and digital experiences.
Moreover, organizations can take advantage of existing infrastructure and legacy systems by layering the microservices on top of them. This makes them robust and flexible to address various pain points and business scenarios.
Document Automation Microservice
In every organization, a large percentage of critical processes rely upon document exchange. Manual data entry for document creation slows down processes, introduces errors, and wastes productivity.
Document automation microservice automates the creation and distribution of business documents from various enterprise data sources including databases, business systems, and XML/JSON/Excel data.
This single microservice automates the generation of the entire organization’s business documents such as invoices, statements, contracts, etc. Developers can generate almost all major document types including PDF, Word, Excel, TXT, PPTX, Images, etc, for omnichannel document distribution. Documents can be generated in bulk/on-demand.
Document automation tools support organizations to meet the definition of digital transformation by increasing efficiency and speed while removing scalability problems.
While bulk generation improves customer and partner communications through personalized documents, on-demand generation empowers them to generate their documents 24×7 anywhere, anytime, on any device that is convenient for them.
This improves the experience. According to Forester, experience-led businesses have 1.7x higher customer retention and 1.6x higher customer satisfaction rates. It positively impacts the both bottom line and the top line.
Using a single document automation microservice across the enterprise lets easy enforcement of brand, templates, and digital assets governance. Thus, ensure compliance with corporate branding and regulatory standards such as GDPR, SOX, and HIPAA.
In a nutshell, document automation microservice enhances customer engagement, reduces operating costs, and controls the inherent risks associated with high volume and on-demand customer communications.
Choosing the right document automation platform is important. It has to be business-user friendly and generates documents from existing business templates. If developers have to create templates, it defeats the whole purpose of digital transformation as coding for each template takes a huge development effort and wastes precious resources on maintenance activities.
Digital Transformation via Document Automation
With digital transformation, business is poised to go digital, do away with cumbersome processes that prolong deliverables, and give the team much-needed leeway to take prompt decisions, especially with high-priority work. Digital transformation assisted with digital automation offers a better outcome both at the internal and external levels. While digital transformation will require a detailed framework of the implementation stages and the outcomes, document automation lends itself to streamlining the document generation and execution processes.
Using document automation microservices in your business processes such as billing, loan documentation, and vendor onboarding in conjunction with other microservices yields faster processing efficiency. For example, it can be integrated with customer/vendor portals for the organization's unique workflow.
Efficiency: With lesser reliance on manual tasks at each stage of the digital implementation, document generation tools improve service for document-focused processes such as loan generation, generating letters from pre-approved existing templates, and automating and document generation.
Speed: Decision-making, mainly when it depends on swift digital documents, opens the doors for better partner collaboration, being one-up in the competitive landscape, and empowering the team to work, swiftly without any access barriers or documentation loopholes in the digital journey.
Quality: Automation reduces manual intervention. It also enables consistent error-free results, increased agility, better productivity, and an ability to use your resources to the optimum without compromising customer experience and reduced operating costs for better revenue.
Increasing employee satisfaction: A direct co-relation to document automation reduces the load on your employees to work long hours on unproductive work. Instead, the focus shifts to realigning individual tasks to improvise on fine-tuning automated tasks to meet individual and company goals. It also means high-priority tasks can get the due attention to scale.
By offering industry-specific accelerators, document automation software providers like EDocGen are broadening the scope of this microservice. These include
- Customer/Partner/Vendor onboarding
- Self-service for loan application and automatic document collection
- Insurance documentation from the broker portal
- Orchestration of Customer and Vendor individualized correspondence
- SOW life cycle management with E-Sign and document archival.
Benefits of implementing a digital transformation strategy
In today's rapidly evolving business landscape, a digital transformation is not just a choice but a necessity for companies to stay competitive. Adapting to the developments of the 21st century through digital transformation can save businesses in several ways and ensure their sustainability and growth.
Firstly, a digital transformation enables businesses to streamline and automate their processes, increasing operational efficiency and productivity. By leveraging advanced technologies, companies can reduce manual labor and human error, saving valuable time and resources. This efficiency translates into cost savings, making the business more competitive in the market.
Furthermore, digital transformation allows businesses to improve their customer experience and engagement. By implementing digital tools and platforms, companies can offer personalized and seamless experiences to their customers, enhancing satisfaction and loyalty. This leads to higher customer retention rates and increased revenue.
When it comes to implementing document automation software as part of the digital transformation strategy, the impact on employees and the overall organization is significant. Document automation software eliminates the need for manual document creation and management. Employees can now focus on more value-added tasks, such as analyzing data or strategizing, rather than tedious paperwork. This increases job satisfaction, engagement, and morale among employees, leading to higher productivity and better outcomes for the organization.
Conclusion
According to BCG, 70% of digital transformation projects fail. Driving and delivering such fundamental change across the organization is challenging. Executives face pressures to show ROI and result in a short-term, thus jeopardizing the entire journey.
SAAS document automation solutions provide quick ROI, setting the stage for a smooth launch and enabling buy-in from all stakeholders. It has a positive impact on digital transformation, improves organizational culture and customer experience, and leads to better leverage of digital assets.