2023 Digitization Benefits: Harness 7 Strategic Benefits

Hello there! As a veteran data analyst and artificial intelligence researcher, I‘ve seen firsthand how digitizing information unlocks game-changing benefits for organizations of all kinds.

In this expert guide, I‘ll highlight 7 compelling reasons you should make digitization a top priority this year. You‘ll learn how converting physical records into digital formats can supercharge your operations when done right.

Let‘s dive in!

What is Digitization and Why Now?

Digitization means taking analog information like paper documents, images, audio and video and converting it into digital formats. This is done by using scanners, digital cameras, voice recorders and specialized software.

The output is digital files – documents, images, recordings and more encoded as bytes of data. This digital information can then be easily organized, searched, shared, analyzed and backed up.

Digitization is the crucial first step in digital transformation. Once analog information is digitized, it unlocks new ways to leverage it through automation, artificial intelligence and more.

Most organizations recognize digitization as a growing priority. 92% of executives surveyed say digital transformation efforts are critical for success in their industry.

And for good reason – companies that digitize their information and processes outperform peers by 5x on profitability and revenue.

However, around 86% of digital transformation initiatives still fail due to challenges like poor planning and employee resistance.

That‘s why it‘s critical to communicate the real, tangible benefits of digitization to your staff. When they see firsthand how it improves collaboration, efficiency and their day-to-day work, adoption becomes natural.

This guide will highlight 7 ways digitization supercharges your organization. Let‘s get started!

1. Unmatched Accessibility

Imagine an organization where information flows freely across teams and distances. Where any document can be accessed by any employee from anywhere instantly.

That‘s the power of digitization.

Digital documents can be accessed by multiple people simultaneously from anywhere with an internet connection. Location and time zone become irrelevant.

Physical paper documents offer no such flexibility. They can only be accessed by one person at a time and only when physically present.

Let‘s compare the accessibility:

This increased accessibility is a game-changer:

• Enables remote and hybrid work – With 15% of US jobs now permanent remote and 26% of workers hybrid, digitization is a must.
• Connects distributed teams – Global organizations rely on digitization to connect interdepartmental and international teams.
• Mobile-friendly – Digital docs can be easily accessed on any device, from desktop to smartphones and tablets.

To fully leverage this advantage, organizations should invest in content services platforms (CSPs). CSPs are cloud-based solutions for storing, managing and accessing enterprise content from anywhere.

Let‘s look at an example. BNP Paribas, a massive multinational bank, used a CSP to improve collaboration. By digitizing paper records and making them accessible via their CSP, 1,500 employees across 7 countries could work together more effectively.

The accessibility superpowers of digitization are indispensable in today‘s digital work environment.

2. Revolutionized Search and Discovery

Imagine being able to instantly find any document just by searching for keywords or parameters. No more rummaging through file cabinets or asking colleagues if they‘ve seen that one file.

Digitization makes this vision a reality through enhanced metadata and search capabilities.

Metadata refers to data about data – descriptions and tags that provide context. Physical documents inherently contain minimal metadata. But digitized documents can be automatically classified with metadata like titles, authors, dates, subjects, keywords and more.

Content services platforms leverage this metadata to enable powerful search experiences. Rather than browsing folder hierarchies, users can simply search for keywords, dates, authors and more to instantly find relevant digital documents.

Let‘s examine some telling statistics:

• 60% of workers say searching for documents is harder than email according to Elastic
• 31% frequently struggle to find documents when under pressure per Elastic
• 93% have difficulty locating needed information according to AIIM

Digitization coupled with purpose-built content services platforms fixes these problems by transforming document discoverability. This prevents productivity losses from employees struggling to find information needed to perform their jobs.

Better search alone can recapture up to 30 minutes per employee daily – time better spent on value-add tasks.

3. Frictionless Collaboration

Digitization also removes friction from document collaboration. Whereas physical documents can only be viewed or edited by one person at a time, digital documents enable real-time multi-user collaboration.

Imagine a world where teams can work together on documents from anywhere at any time:

• Iterating on ideas faster – No more waiting to share edits. Teams can refine ideas and projects in real-time.
• Streamlined reviews – Simultaneous multi-user review, feedback and approvals. No more email chains with piecemeal comments.
• Inclusive decision-making – Executive teams can easily review the same figures and proposals at once, enabling aligned decisions.
• Increased agility – With stakeholders empowered to collaborate digitally, organizations pivot faster.

This collaboration advantage requires the right tools. Basic fileshares won‘t cut it.

Advanced content services platforms (CSPs) include purpose-built collaboration enablement like:

• Co-editing – Allows simultaneous editing by multiple users
• Version control – Tracks iterative changes
• Comments – Discussions attached to document sections
• Task assignments – Workflow automation around reviews
• Alerts – Real-time notifications of activity

With these features, CSPs remove friction from team collaboration on digital documents.

Global engineering firm Jacobs achieved a 20% productivity boost by moving project collaboration to its CSP platform with co-authoring and task management.

Digitization combined with intelligent content services frees teams to collaborate freely. This drives faster innovation, aligned decisions and increased agility.

4. Streamlined Document Processing

Paper-driven processes like data entry and document review are manual, tedious and error-prone. Digitization opens the door to next-generation technologies that automate these efforts for massive productivity gains.

Consider that unstructured data like scanned documents, images, emails and handwritten notes makes up over 90% of enterprise information. Yet it‘s extremely difficult and expensive to productively manage at scale.

That‘s where intelligent document processing (IDP) comes in. IDP leverages artificial intelligence to automatically classify, extract and process data from digitized documents.

The steps in intelligent document processing include:

1. Scanning paper records or ingesting digital files
2. Extracting text through optical character recognition (OCR)
3. Identifying and classifying documents using machine learning
4. Extracting key fields of data using natural language processing
5. Exporting structured data

This automates slow and expensive manual document processing. IDP enables processing thousands of documents in hours versus weeks.

For example, UK rental company Fleet Hire Services used IDP to reduce time spent processing 11,500 monthly rental contracts from 4 weeks to just 4 hours.

By eliminating manual document processing, employees are freed to focus on high-value tasks. IDP drives immediate ROI through reduced labor costs and overhead.

5. Slash Document Storage Costs

Maintaining rooms full of filing cabinets is incredibly expensive. Between the real estate, shelving, folders, labeling and labor, costs add up quickly.

Digitization offers a better way. Digital documents require miniscule storage space compared to physical files.

Let‘s crunch some numbers:

• Physical – Storing paper documents for 1 terabyte requires around 2 file cabinets. Renting floor space for that storage costs ~$450 per year.
• Digital – Storing 1 terabyte in the cloud on Amazon S3 costs just ~$75 per year.

That‘s a 6X cost reduction by switching to digital! Cloud storage is extraordinarily cheap compared to physical document storage when you add up all the costs.

Savings scale rapidly for bigger organizations. One financial services company cut document storage costs by 77% by going digital – saving $600,000+ annually.

There are also indirect savings from freeing up office space and eliminating the overhead of manual physical document management.

Making the shift from physical to digital records yields massive cost reductions across the board.

6. Bulletproof Information Retention

Digitized documents also provide much more robust, bulletproof retention over the long-term. This is crucial for compliance with regulations requiring data preservation.

Consider that many laws mandate retaining certain records for years:

• Tax returns must be kept for 3 years minimum per IRS
• Financial records for 7 years under requirements like SOX
• Healthcare documents for 6-10 years as required by HHS

Safely storing physical media for so long is difficult:

• Paper and film decay over time due to light, heat, humidity and risks like fires and floods. Digital remains stable.
• Physical backup is complex and costly. Digital records can be backed up to the cloud.

Robust content management platforms like content services platforms (CSPs) unlock digital retention:

• Redundant, distributed cloud storage designed for digital preservation
• Retention policies to restrict document destruction
• Automated migration to new formats over time

With military-grade backup capabilities, digitization on enterprise CSPs guarantees document availability and retention over decades. This enables organizations to cost-effectively comply with complex regulations.

7. Fortified Data Security

Many assume paper provides better security than digital files. But in fact, digitized documents can be far more secure when managed properly.

Content service platforms include advanced controls like:

• Granular user permissions restricting access to authorized personnel only
• Encryption of data both in transit and storage
• Complete audit logs tracking all access and activities
• Data loss prevention features to prevent unauthorized sharing

With protections like these in place, digitized documents and data gain an added security advantage over vulnerable paper records.

Let‘s explore two examples:

Access controls – With physical documents, once someone gains access to a filing cabinet or room there is nothing stopping them reading everything. Digital permissions allow restricting document visibility on a person-by-person basis.

Audit trails – There is no record of who accessed a physical file and what they did with it. Digital audits record every individual access and action for forensic tracing.

Engineering design firm Arup chose a CSP to improve security and collaboration on sensitive planning documents. The platform provided air-tight protections while enabling access for distributed teams.

Advanced CSP security allows organizations to protect intellectual property and customer data against insider and external threats.

Start Your Digitization Journey Today

As we‘ve explored, digitization unlocks immense strategic value – from supercharged collaboration to futureproof compliance. Leading organizations are already realizing these benefits.

But digitizing information is just the start. To maximize results requires investing in solutions purpose-built for managing digitized content, like content services platforms.

If exploring digitization for your organization, I‘d welcome the chance to chat. With decades of experience implementing these technologies at Fortune 500 companies, I can provide candid insider advice.

Feel free to schedule a consultation at your convenience. Here‘s to charting your path to digitization success!