Deliver Fast ROI via Document Imaging

With the end of the year approaching and a weakening economic forecast, there is a lot of talk right now about the IT forecasts for the coming year. A recent AIIM survey of end users found that 42% or organizations see hard dollar ROI as "more" or "much more" important than 12 months ago. On a positive note, the same survey showed that only 27% of organizations expect IT spending to decrease.

I’m certainly biased, but this news is encouraging for the document imaging space. Why? It is a technology that delivers fast, demonstratable ROI in a number of ways. Just a few examples:

1. Cuts operating costs – hard dollars are recovered by lowering the costs of resources, materials, courier and fax charges, and storage related to paper processes
2. Increases worker efficiencies – replacing manual, labor-intensive and error-prone paper-based processes with electronic workflows allows you to get more value from your existing employees, reducing the need for expanding your workforce
3. Leverage your IT systems – businesses aren’t fully benefiting from software investments because information/data that exists in paper form isn’t being processed as quickly or securely as the information that resides in those systems.

As these examples show, document imaging ROI is typically process-oriented. But BPM and other process automation methods and technologies are at risk of being put on hold due to tightened budgets and a track record of taking a long time to implement and even longer time to demonstrate ROI. Maybe this year is not the time to undertake a corporate-wide BPM project. But it is definitely the year to look at eliminating paper from typical business processes such as invoice processing, expense reporting, purchase orders, employee on-boarding, recruitment, contract management, loan processing and so on. More examples are available here.

If you can demonstrate immediate ROI by using document imaging to improve business processes by integrating paper into electronic workflows this year, it will go a long way towards a successful business process management initiative in the future.

Comments

[Greg Walters]

Good input, good post.

Seems the ROI was always there, but now is the time to really bring the issue home - cost savings on all fronts.

Enough to sometimes save a few jobs.

[sayen]

Excellent idea!I think cell phone used in health industry will certainly be a boon and it will help patients to save time.