Digicom Technology News

A recent survey by Ricoh which stems from an IDC whitepaper shows companies are spending less money on improving document-driven business processes designed to mitigate risk, such as business continuity/risk assessment, business monitoring and controls, and compliance/audit processes, areas that Ricoh recommends companies spend more time understanding and improving. The survey also found driving paper out of processes doesn’t necessarily improve efficiency and companies are too dependent on internal staff to re-engineer critical processes.

“In general, the more deficient the processes are, the less organisations are investing to improve them,” reads the IDC white paper, sponsored by Ricoh. “So even though risk mitigation and other ineffective processes are receiving some investment, they are getting less than other processes and arguably should be receiving a large degree of attention [to minimise impact to the security of the organisation].”

The good news is that well over half of the respondents said improving document processes governing organisational compliance and risk mitigation/management would deliver benefits across business oversight/control, compliance risk, information security risk and business continuity risk. Ricoh’s approach to improving document-driven processes like these includes: definition of the desired state and the creation of a plan that includes critical metrics and key performance indicators; creating a new information infrastructure designed and checked for alignment with business objectives and customer expectations; and a campaign to educate and create awareness with end-users of the new process.

“It’s vitally important that organisations take a holistic approach to fully understand their information infrastructure, where they may need to make improvements, and work with an experienced partner who can help them transform their processes to be more efficient,” said Chas Moloney, director, Ricoh UK and Ireland. “But in the case of processes that are theoretically designed to minimise risk, such as compliance and audit processes or business continuity processes, it is even more vital for companies to continuously monitor, evaluate and invest in improvements. Our research shows this is not occurring in many cases, and we are urging companies to address this growing concern now before they incur even greater risk to their organization.”

A high percentage of business processes (30 to 40 percent) remain paper-driven, the research found, and many processes “jump back and forth” between paper and electronic workflows. Nonetheless, “the least effective processes [in the study] are also the least paper-based. This exposes the myth that simply driving paper out of processes necessarily makes them more efficient. Rather, the health of the process also depends on deeper-level assessment of workflows and attributes of the process itself.”

If you would like to find out how an improvement to document-driven processes can benefit your business, please contact Digicom today.