Document Management News

Document managers are outsourcing areas of their document processing to save money in response to the recession.

Océ Business Services questioned 230 corporate executives who were responsible for document management processes at their organisations. The survey was designed to gauge their views on how their firms were coping with the recession when it came to document processing.

The survey considered five areas of document management. These were document imaging (paper-to-digital conversion), enterprise-wide print/copy, mail and shipping, records management, and fleet management (print/copy/fax fleet).

When it came to outsourcing, a high number of respondents (74%) said their company was taking this approach with at least one of the five document activities.

The top three document activities that companies are outsourcing include mail and shipping (19%), print/copy centre (18%), and document imaging (15%).

The top overall business benefits that the respondents reported gaining from these outsourced document activities included lowering cost, improving operational performance, and enabling a greater focus on the core business.

Whilst 26% of respondents said their organisation is not outsourcing any of the five document activities, 33% of respondents said their firms would be increasing their outsourcing activities over the next 12 to 24 months. Document imaging (12%) was the area attracting the greatest interest when stepping up outsourcing activities.

Of the five document management activities, document imaging was seen to have the strongest effect across a broad range of business goals and plans.

Respondents reported that document imaging has the greatest impact on lowering cost and improving operational performance. Executives said their organisations have implemented document imaging in key functional areas, such as general administrative (like accounting, human resources), and core business processes (such as new customer applications and loan processing).

Only a slim majority (55%) said their company is measuring document process performance. These companies are measuring performance elements like user activity and document processing timeliness and accuracy.

Of those organisations that do measure performance, only 24% use state-of-the-art systems for data analysis and reporting, such as a web-based business intelligence dashboard that incorporates key performance indicators.

Instead, the majority of respondents (56%) said their organisation uses traditional reporting applications like Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint slides. Therefore there is an opportunity for suppliers selling more precise reporting systems.