IMPROVING ORGANIZATIONAL PERFORMANCE WITH DIGITAL OFFICE
Authors: Naresh Makhijani, Sherni Makhijani. 22/09/2023
Each year brings new challenges for businesses. However, organizations are expected to perform better. Lately, the economic situation is changing at a faster rate: with the possibility of a recession, strengthened by conflicts around the world and climate change. The growth of Artificial Intelligence is also disrupting many industries. With the acceptance of hybrid work among organizations, many leaders are pushed to change their business models. Many organizations are implementing a digital office, but many leaders have yet to effectively reap the benefits.
WHAT IS DIGITAL OFFICE?
It is a working environment in which information is stored and organized electronically and is easily retrievable. Many components of productivity and collaboration are executed digitally, allowing people to work from anywhere. This allows companies to become agile. Organizations are focusing on digital strategies to develop their data management and security. 70% of organizations are planning or developing their data management strategy, however only 20% have managed to complete it.
WHAT FEATURES SHOULD A DIGITAL OFFICE PLATFORM HAVE?
The following are major features needed in a digital platform:
- Tasks: Listing tasks for each employee as soon as they log in, complete with the status of each task.
- Document Management: easily create document files and archiving, simplifying document retrieval and sharing.
- Workflow Approval: Automatically sharing documents to the team, or sent for further approval, according to the structure of the workflow.
- Digital Signature: Once the document has been approved, then it can be signed digitally.
- Collaboration: Enable collaboration with the team, department, other departments, or partners.
- E-Archive: Archive and retrieve documents easily using meta data.
- Distribution: Share documents through various options, such as common folders to specific department folders.
- Reminder: Reminders for documents that need renewals (e.g. contracts), set to various times (e.g. 90, 60, 30, even 7 days) to the concerned team.
- Dashboard: View a snapshot of activities in the digital office to see the state of the organization.
- E-Locker: Ensure that only certain people can access certain organizational documents.
- Audit Trail: Track the status of documents while they are traveling through the workflow.
BENEFITS
There are a number of ways that implementing a digital office can benefit your organization:
- Increase Revenue: Organizations that transform digitally can see 2x the revenue compared to organizations that are behind on digital. Growth within the use of digital offices is also important, organizations with higher digital maturity reported a 45% revenue growth compared to those with lower digital maturity.
- Increasing Organizational Speed and Agility: Digital office streamlines workflows, saving employees time on tedious tasks and increasing productivity. 40% of business leaders claim that digital transformation helps increase operational efficiency.
- Better Customer Experience: 35% business executives state that increasing their digital transformation enables them to meet customer expectations better.
- Increased Security: Ensuring security of content with encrypted data, secure data transfers, storage and personalized vault.
- Easy Storage and Accessibility: Store files in centralized and secure system, making it more efficient for employees to retrieve important documents using keywords and index information.
The global digital transformation market is expected to be worth 3,144 billion USD in 2030, compared to the 695 billion 2023. Foundry found that 93% of organizations have, or plan to, adopt a “digital-first” business strategy. Many industries are planning or implementing it, with Financial and Technology in the lead.
HOW LONG IS IMPLEMENTATION?
Implementing a digital office can take 3 to 12 months, depending on the scope and size. It goes through 5 clear steps:
Digital Office is extremely important for organizations today to stay competitive. However, it’s also becoming a necessity for the future. Organizations that are pushing back on implementing their digital office are at risk of falling behind as challenges become more unpredictable, and changes happening at faster rates.
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