Analytics have been part of document management conversations quite a bit over the past 12 months, including here on Enterprise Matters. These nine blogs were the most popular analytics-related posts since this time last year. Who knows where you were on your digital journey when they originally published, but maybe the time is right now to take another look at analytics for document management. Click on any of these blog titles for more learning.
Analytics Leads to Understanding. Understanding Leads to Improvement
Wanting to be more digital is one thing, but knowing where to start is another. How does data help? It identifies areas that would most benefit from automation or digitization. How could these operational uses of business data help you?
- Process optimization
- Supply chain improvements
- Maintenance scheduling
- Security monitoring
- Regulatory compliance
Let analytics lead you to better understanding of your business, and point the way to continuous improvement.
In this video from Xenith Document Systems, Newfield IT General Manager Kevin Conder talks about using MPS data to drive change and transformation.
Start with Data. Lead with Facts.
“The work that got us to the present won’t get us to the future.”
Paul Roehrig and Benjamin Pring
“The Work Ahead. Mastering the New Digital Economy”
As organizations in both public and private sectors shift to new, digital ways of operating, some question the efficiency, security and future of their current paper workflows. If the past isn’t our model, what should be? Clues lie in analytics. With the ability to examine security and costs, user and document analytics provide a level of data worthy even of C-level attention. Management can use analytics insights to make fact-based decisions and drive innovation.
View this SlideShare for a quick overview on why digitization is critical to the future of your organization and how document analytics make it happen.
Using Printing Analytics as Proof for Change
Here are five typical reasons to change a print environment:
- It’s inefficient
- It’s costly
- It’s wasteful
- It’s unsustainable
- It’s time-consuming
But these reasons alone won’t be enough to convince your fellow decision makers to take action. People don’t change until you give them a good reason. What you need is a business case backed by analytics. When you can see every touch point in a process, you can also spot which ones can be removed or automated. Printing analytics indicate which processes would benefit from automation and why current processes aren’t efficient.
12 Questions to Ask Before Automating Your Processes
Like many organizations, yours may be interested in process automation for all the right reasons, but it pays to validate. Analyzing printing trends and volumes by department is a great start to finding paper-heavy or inefficient tasks. Take a deep dive into your process inefficiencies to quantify time and money savings from digitizing and automating. Ask these questions:
- What types of documents do you process? For example, invoices, proposals, time sheets or forms.
- How do you store these documents? Filing cabinets, storage boxes or electronic formats? Combination?
- How many documents, both paper and digital, do you process? Per day/month/year
- In what formats do users create or receive the documents? PDF, email, Word files, post or paper
- How are they being distributed, both inside and outside the business? Email, website, fax, mobile post.
- How many people require access to these documents? In total and at any one time.
If these questions have you stumped, seven more await on the list at this blog. While they may be hard to answer now, don’t avoid them. Get answers before you automate. A good MPS provider can help you with process improvements, while maximizing the ROI of your existing infrastructure.
The Analytics Continuum: What Do You Want to Know?
To understand the analytics associated with Managed Print Services, start with the components of the analytics continuum. Use these definitions to understand the different types of MPS analytics available to you and how they help wherever you are in your MPS journey.
- MPS maturity analytics
- Device analytics
- User analytics
- Document analytics
- Process analytics
Document Analytics Drives Greater Efficiency in Banking Processes
Many enterprises don’t realize the connections between printing, document use, work processes and employee productivity. They may be even less informed about the relevant data that’s available, which could be used to be a more digital business.
In financial services firms, with their prevalence of paper-based documents, many hidden process inefficiencies can be brought to light through analytics. The typical loan process illustrates the complexities among workflows, document and various stakeholders. These inefficiencies are significant, because they result in delays, costs, errors and poor customer experiences.
Document analytics helps bankers re-think loan processing to minimize paper and human touch points. That’s just one use of data to precisely streamline and automate work processes. Why not start capturing and using information, when the outcomes can be to costs and IT burden, better compliance and good customer experiences.
MPS User Analytics Services: Get a Good Look at Your Data
The data in your networked printers holds a mother lode of information about your enterprise. These intelligent, networked devices exemplify the Internet of Things, and your print fleet hosts a rich analytics environment. You can learn a lot about users, documents and the processes that carry that information around your organization.
There’s a lot to know and do when it comes to managed print analytics, so having someone who can take you through step by step is always a good option. With assistance from an MPS provider, you don’t have to wait until you have the right team, talent and technology to start your analytics journey. User Analytics Services can provide a complete view of your data and capture insights about user behaviors.
An analytics-driven MPS provider uses dashboards to present information. The simple, intuitive application used by Xerox User Analytics Services saves weeks of learning tools, testing programs, creating flat reports and other tasks. For a quick overview of user analytics services, view this video and share it with your team.
