According to Business Review, developing a digital mailroom, a central platform that collects information within the organisation and sends it to the relevant department, increases productivity by 30 to 50 per cent and reduces customer response time by 3 to 10 times.¹

Spencer Wyer, global chief technology officer of UK based EDM Group, says: “Every organisation should capture data and documents from every channel of communication in real time as part of their digital transformation road map. Without this, there is a significant risk of snail mail and even email preventing true digital transformation. “2

"If you do not solve data capture across every channel at the same time, you do not have complete information.

”It is the convergence of communication, content and process, turning analogue information into true data that can then be captured intelligently and processed efficiently to deliver invaluable management information and business intelligence in real time."³

Benefits of implementing a DTS Digital Mailroom

Cut costs and delays with managing paper by outsourcing your manual processes. Inbound communications enter the system quickly, are routed automatically and accessible from anywhere, reducing the amount of labour needed to maintain or even increase productivity.

• Reduce the decision cycle by removing bottlenecks, ensuring that inbound communications get to the right person in the shortest time-frame possible.
• Avoid stalled processes and manual tracking/reminders by automatically notifying a manager or co-worker when a task has reached an escalation point.
• Improved customer service through greater turnaround times, easier access to information, including historic information, and reduced errors.
• Enforce compliance with company policies and external mandates guaranteeing that all of the proper procedures are followed and documented, enabling compliance with audits and preventing fraud.
• Increased visibility to make the right decisions to achieve business goals. 
• Advanced analytics expose data about employee productivity, transaction volumes and more to identify areas for improvement.
• Economical user licensing options that make it practical to extend secure access even to occasional or temporary employees, enabling a truly enterprise approach to work management.

DTS delivers digital mailroom automation that is easy to implement, configure, use and modify.

Our mailroom automation capabilities can help organisations of all sizes significantly increase productivity, shorten cycle times, reduce overhead costs, improve visibility and compliance with financial standards and audits.

Our digital mailroom solution is a cloud-native, end-to-end application that can automate the flow of work in any mailroom.

The DTS Professional Services team will analyse your existing business processes, streamline them through automated business rules and implement your improved end-to-end workflow solution.

In Australia, local government agencies are estimated to have 120 – 150 various application forms; from registrations, to permits and requests. While there are a few councils that have started migrating legacy paper-based systems to online, for many, this simply meant the forms were available online, with the rate-payers still needing to download, print and post or submit in person. The digital transformation was never truly realised.

Challenges for Local Government in digital transformation

Local Government are facing the challenge of increased compliance and the goal of transforming to more efficient paperless processes and systems by 2020.

Last month, Civica and UTS Institute for Public Policy and Governance announced the results of a survey of 200 professionals within IT teams, finance, Corporate and governance teams at local government councils, state departments and infrastructural organisations from Australia and New Zealand. The Report, titled The Changing Landscape for the Public Sector: The Challenges of Building Digital Bridges highlighted the drivers for digital change and the barriers to it:

They (local government) are driven by a need to “do more with less,” and by the political and regulatory climate in the country. An increased burden placed on governmental organisations and regulated markets has resulted in a greater appetite to deliver shared services with each other and suitable partner organisations.

Additionally, factors such as rapid technological changes, cost considerations and changes in citizen behaviour and demographics are changing the role of public sector organisations from being providers of sustainable infrastructure to being guardians of community resources and providing support to an aging population. It is also forcing them to adopt new ways of working.

Budgets and culture a major hindrance to digital transformation

The report found that 70 per cent of survey respondents claim that limited working budgets act as a major constraint to digital transformative change, while 65 per cent believe organisational culture is an impediment.

Speed of technological changes (37 per cent), difficulty in matching user expectations (32 per cent) and conservative leadership (25 per cent) were also listed as barriers.

According to Professor Roberta Ryan, Director, Institute for Public Policy and Governance and UTS Centre for Local Government, local governments in particular continue to struggle with limited funding, implementation and resourcing issues for digital projects.

“Many local councils have to make a trade-off. Digital services are being pushed down the list of priorities in favour of more immediate requirements to build or maintain physical infrastructure that serves to keep communities moving. Meanwhile, the absence of leadership understanding in driving an outcome-based strategy is also hindering successful implementation of digital initiatives,” said Ryan.

The research also revealed that while 84 per cent of the respondents view digital transformation and change as an opportunity, 32 per cent (or 1 in 3) believe that their organisations only talk about emerging digital technologies. 

Benchmarking digital maturity of Local Government

Also released in November this year, the new ANZ Local Government Digital Maturity Index (DMI) surveyed over 100 local government authorities in Australia and New Zealand about the extent to which they are digitising their internal processes and the delivery of their services.

The Index shows that while many LGAs have made a start at digital transformation, very few have achieved a high degree of maturity.

One significant finding in the report is that 90 per cent of respondents agree that digital is the way of the future, but that only 20 per cent believe that their own LGA is doing enough to transition to a digital environment.¹ 

One question in the Digital Maturity Index survey asked respondents to describe the most significant impediments to successful digital transformation. Answers were not prompted, but supplied as free form text. The results were categorised, with the top four areas of challenge:

• Cost of resourcing (mentioned by 22 per cent of respondents)
• Resistance to change (19 per cent)Limited technical capability and infrastructure (17 per cent)
• Lack of leadership or strategy (14 per cent).

These findings lined up with the findings of the Civica / UTS report.According to Graham Phillipson, Editor of Government News and author of the Local Government Digital Maturity report, every challenge represents an opportunity.

“It is clear that strong leadership, more streamlined or automated processes, creative approaches to staff engagement, transitioning from legacy systems or maximising the returns from existing systems are all critical factors to the successful transition to a citizen-centric digital local government.

“All levels of government are under pressure to deliver new and better services, with the same or reduced levels of funding and staffing. But digital transformation opens up the potential for significant efficiency gains and allows for resource reallocation to areas and tasks that add more value to the LGA,” concluded Phillipson.²

References

¹ https://www.governmentnews.com.au/2017/11/digital-transformation-local-government-way-ahead/
² https://www.governmentnews.com.au/2017/11/lgas-measure-digital-transformation/

The term ‘Digital Transformation’ can mean many things to many people. To some it can seem an overwhelming process to convert known and comfortable physical processes into a new, and unfamiliar, digital process. While to others it is the sign of progression, and the evolution of laborious and outdated processes into a faster and more efficient way in which to conduct business. 

These are both correct. 

Digital transformation is an undertaking to transform all current manual and physical processes into user friendly digital practices. From the scanning of all available documents, to the training of staff to use and incorporate new processes and systems. Once it has been implemented and running for a while, you will ask yourself how you ever lived without it. 

One of the biggest changes Digital Transformation has wrought is that of enterprise content management (ECM), which is the capturing of any content relating to the business. Content Management technologies were first adopted in order to reduce a business’ reliance on paper, and one of the best examples of how our approach towards documents has changed is the e-Form.

Where you once needed to fill out pages of documents with black inked pens, you can now tick boxes and e-sign a document. Once you have finished, the document will be automatically stored on the servers of the company it came from. Meaning that data is captured, stored and retrieved just as easily. 

What is the real impact of Digital Transformation?

Like all things business related, the biggest impact of Digital Transformation is in profits and time. When a manual process becomes digital, costs are reduced because there is a significant reduction in the amount of people required to help facilitate the process of capturing that data. The other benefit is that of time. The less people involved in the processing of an order, invoice or payment, the sooner an order is shipped, an invoice is settled and a payment made. 

Speak to us today about how we can design and execute a Digital Transformation Solution for your business.

Digital transformation has often been placed in the court of IT due to its digital nature. However, as these digital changes are more about operational improvement rather than IT implementation, it should be the function of an Operations team to be the most important influencer for a truly successful digital transformation; with Operations working in partnership with a skilled IT team.

Amongst the many tasks that an Operations Manager or Operations Team are charged with is efficiency and productivity; driving best practice throughout all areas of the business.

The goal of digital transformation is to reduce cost pressures by streamlining technology investments, creating synergies, and improving utilisation, all in the name of increasing operational efficiency and customer satisfaction. These are the typical core responsibilities for the Operations department, who can add their insight on the specific business operations and productivity challenges.

Operations and IT should consider digital transformation as a truly collaborative and transformative business approach; a strategy to improving business efficiency and customer engagement.

Digital Transformation Solutions is a new division of Compu-Stor. Digital Transformation Solutions from Compu-Stor allows businesses to dynamically use data within existing business systems across multiple departments, giving quicker access to data, meaning swifter business decisions can be made based on real information, not forecasts or estimates.

References

https://blogs.dxc.technology/2016/11/01/is-someone-missing-at-the-digital-transformation-table/