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FEATURE: DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT
Setting your data
free: Going digital
in the new era of
data chaos
There is more data in existence than ever before
but its usefulness can be limited if it’s trapped on
a piece of paper. Gregoire de Clercq, Marketing
Director, Kodak Alaris Information Management,
tells us how to set your data free.
T
he ever-increasing flood of data
into and out of an organisation
and how best to manage it is
one of the greatest challenges
and opportunities facing businesses today.
Today’s era of ‘data chaos’ – the point where
the size and growth of unstructured data
vastly outpaces structured data – has created
a pressing requirement for companies to
transform information management and
storage strategies to improve operational
efficiency and ensure profitable growth.
Companies are managing more data from
more sources and traditional systems are
no longer sufficient. Data is ubiquitous
and is embedded in countless formats; the
majority, at least 90%, approximately 35
Zettabytes of business data, is unstructured.
It’s in our email, paper documents, online
posts, videos and more. Most of the time it’s
free form, in every format except the neatly
organised rows and columns of a database,
and leveraging this information to drive
it can get lost – it is not expected to go away
completely for quite some time. But, unless
hard copy files are scanned, unlike soft copy
files, the data they contain can’t be used
in digital workflows or be accessed from a
common storage system. Businesses have
to work out how to seamlessly connect the
physical and digital data worlds and create a
joined-up storage system that enables them to
extract maximum value from all information.
Regardless of business size or sector,
digital transformation is the key to
increased productivity, greater business
insights, accelerated business growth
and a sustainable competitive edge. The
digital age is upon us and organisations
need to get smarter about data. Scanning
paper-based information into an electronic
repository ensures greater control over it,
while increasing security and accessibility to
information, but this in itself is not enough.
Companies should also be capturing,
indexing and automatically keying data, so
DATA DOESN’T NEED TO BE CHAOTIC
AND DOCUMENT STORAGE SHOULDN’T
BE A STRUGGLE FOR ANY ORGANISATION.
business growth, represents too great an
opportunity for businesses to ignore.
Despite its constraints – paper has to be
physically moved; space is required to store
it; it slows down business transformation and
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it becomes active for all employees and can
be used to drive the business forward. Digital
transformation is good for business. For
example, digital records management offers
many advantages over paper solutions, not
least of which is the ability to synchronise
Gregoire de Clercq, Marketing Director,
Kodak Alaris Information Management
information. Personal data protection is
critically important and a highly sensitive
issue in the world today. The more a business
lets a customer’s personal data remain in
analogous form such as paper, the more
risk individuals are exposed to as that paper
moves around the organisation. Consider the
advantages of capturing personal data at
the point of origin and then dealing with the
digital data once it’s inside the information
management system, where additional
layers of security such as encryption or access
control measures can be applied.
Within forms processing, well-architected
workflows for form recognition, information
extraction and quality assurance, remove
bottlenecks to success. The mailroom,
typically the centre of paper-based
correspondence in many companies, can
be equipped with automated workflows
to rapidly manage data, alongside reliable
exception handling capabilities which will
free up time for employees to focus on
core job functions and ensure time-critical
documents move at the speed of business.
Or consider how powering the journey that
a client or customer experiences with your
company, with digitised processes, can lead
to increased customer satisfaction levels.
Data doesn’t need to be chaotic and
document storage shouldn’t be a struggle
for any organisation. Now is the time to start
thinking about the future and what digital
transformation could mean for your business.
By embracing digital storage, you could soon
start to streamline internal processes and
meet your long-term business objectives. n
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