16 01732 759725 DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION its use internally still have to deal with paper coming from external sources. To effectively capture incoming information, organisations should look to digitise at the first touchpoint, and put in place policies to ensure physical documents are suitably and securely managed,” adds Hiroaki Kashiwagi, President & CEO at PFU EMEA. To download the full report visit www.pfuemea.com/en-gb/ quocirca (29%) and employee preference (25%) appear key among the reasons why paper maintains such a presence within organisational processes, along with the most prevalent response, legal compliance reasons (39%). The findings of the report also come at a time where COVID, the ‘Great Resignation’ and increasing costs have shifted the focus of digital transformation. In the Fujitsu Image Scanners Organisational Intelligence Research Report 2020, conducted by PFU, top drivers were shown to be efficiency and profitability; in 2022, reasons are more heavily weighted towards business agility and having a scalable IT infrastructure that allows for contingencies (53%). “It’s clear that organisations still rely on paper for many daily operations; something that could be seen as problematic from a security point of view, and perhaps indicative of an education gap among organisations and employees when it comes to the storage and management of paper,” comments Louella Fernandes, Director at Quocirca. “For many organisations, paper is still an important part of their workflow processes. Even those who have minimised PFU (EMEA) Limited has unveiled findings from the Scanning As An Enabler for Digital Transformation report, in which Quocirca, the print industry’s leading source of market insight, explored IT employees’ views towards scanners and paper use in the workplace. The report finds that paper remains engrained across many business processes, including those related to customer and employee records; 52% of companies haven’t yet fully digitised payslips, while 69% of organisations still store customer records in paper form. The research also found that while some paper copies of important documents, such as customer records, contracts and identification documents, are securely destroyed (10%), 41% of paper documents are left lying around the office, presenting a potential security risk. And with almost a quarter (22%) of respondents saying that they choose paper over digital for security reasons, it would appear there is a wide disconnect between the perceived risks associated with digital and physical formats. The survey also suggests that the paper ecosystem within organisations remains reliant on a number of factors; customer need Clinging on to paper An independent report from Quocirca, commissioned by PFU (EMEA) Limited, shows that despite remote and hybrid working pushing businesses toward digital transformation, a staggering amount of documents are still paper-based Scanning as an enabler for digital transformation September 2022 © Quocirca 2022 1 Scanning as an enabler for digital transformation Findings from research into the usage of scanning September 2022 Scanning as an enabler for digital transformation September 2022 The enduring eed for paper As to why organisations see paper as a continuing need, 39% state legal reasons, 29% customer need, and 25% employee preference (Figure 3). The UK (45%) and Germany (44%) are more likely to state legal reasons, as is the public sector and government (46%). Legal reasons for keeping paper are becoming less compelling: many governments prefer or mandate digitised records of certain documents or digital feeds of particular types of information for auditability and ease of discovery. Quocirca recommends that organisations digitise whatever they can and store the resulting records in a controlled manner, where metadata can provide an evidential trail of edits, deletions, and so on, should the need arise. While employees can be weaned off the use of paper, doing so with customers may be more difficult. However, customer-facing organisations are now offering electronic invoices and r ceipts, and customers are becoming accustomed to this. If the customer is another organisation, it will be facing the same issues as the original organisation: it will want to minimise the use of paper wherever possible and likely be open to straight-through electronic document processing. This will not happen quickly, as a large proportion of documents will continue to arrive at an organisation’s doors as paper for the foreseeable future. Any move to a less-paper environment will require the right type and quality of scanners. The right scanner for the job will be able to embed less-paper behaviours across the organisation – and thus feed through to customers and suppliers and create smoother straig t-through processes. Figure 3. Reasons to maintain paper and main digital and paper documents 48% of organisations only use digital payroll/payslips, with 41% of photographs stored digitally – which is hardly surprising in today’s world of digital photography. Meanwhile, 31% of organisations store business cards solely in paper format. More worryingly for security and audit purposes, 22% only store contracts in paper format, with 17% storing identification documents as paper only. There appears to be a widely held perception that legal reasons are a barrier to removing paper. However, t re t e top re sons or t e on n ed presen e o p per sed pro esses in o r or nis on e rit p o ee re eren e sto er re eren e e e sons t t pe o do ents re pro essed t o r or nis on ayroll ayslips hotographs ustomer records o p ete di it usiness cards ontracts den ca on documents o p ete p per How information capture is enabling digital transformation success Fujitsu Image Scanners Organisational Intelligence Research Report 2020 Louella Fernandes
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