How Digitization Creates Better Human Journeys
What is the greatest influence that digitization has on organizations and government institutions? Increased operational efficiency and data security? The ability to find information at the click of a button? The automation of document management?
While these are all true (and valuable parts of what makes digitization so great), they’re not the most revolutionary part of the process at all.
The biggest game changer that digitization introduces to operations is the ability to connect people with their purpose, their lives, and each other again.
We know, it’s a tall order. But digitization delivers.
Understanding The Personal Impact Of Paper
Unsustainable paper-based workflows and manual operations are still a part of various industries, including legal, financial, real estate, healthcare, and education. But when we consider the fact that the local and state departments that should be guiding the future of the country are in the same boat, it should come as little surprise.
But what’s often overlooked when discussing the downsides of paper-based processes is the impact it has on people.
Missing out on so much more
If time is money, it’s also opportunity. And paper-based information management robs organizations and constituents of valuable opportunities.
The biggest impact of the drawn-out, error-prone nature of paper isn’t the cost of it. Rather it’s in the way people are affected by it when they’re robbed of the efficiency of digital solutions.
When working with paper, constituents have to trudge through time-consuming manual processes when dealing with government bodies. Employees aren’t offered the room and time needed to innovate and engage with people because they’re so caught up in administration.
When there’s no time to find new angles and approaches to operational challenges and constituent queries, the price of paper becomes the opportunities lost when all your time is spent finalizing singular administrative tasks.
Seeing the error of our ways
Human error is a given part of any human environment. People make mistakes - it’s a part of the human experience.
But those mistakes can be costly when your department is working with the private and confidential information of constituents whose lives can be drastically impacted by even the smallest of errors.
The impact is especially big when it comes to data-driven decision-making that requires accurate historical data to understand the layout of your jurisdiction. And when data is lost or incorrectly captured, decisions are robbed of their effectiveness from the moment they’re made.
Dealing with the blame of ineffective services
Neither of these downsides is born out of ill intent. And yet it's your employees, not your processes, who have to deal with the brunt of negative feedback when constituents experience delays or when their teams are unable to offer innovative service.
This is why a people-driven solution is needed - and digitization may just be the answer you’re looking for.
Considering the Broader Impact of Digitization
Digitization, as ironic as it may be, is a human journey. In our fast-paced, data-saturated lives, finding ways to find simplicity and find ways to enjoy those lives in an increasingly demanding operational landscape.
It’s a simplicity and a working balance that can only be achieved through digitization.
Because digitization is about taking the drudgery of manual administrative tasks off the table so that people can focus on the work they’re doing, making a difference in constituents’ lives and building better processes to enhance the employee experience.
Through increased operational efficiency and information access, employee collaboration can increase by 55%, as found in a Forrester/Adobe report investigating the effect of digitization. Digital documentation creates a far more satisfactory working environment than manual searches for information allow.
Even though paper can offer a sense of reassurance and reliability to some, those personal preferences can go out the window rather quickly when they take up the time that could have been used helping people.
And the benefits aren’t limited to employee experiences. The Forrester/Adobe report also found that customer experiences improved by 47% once digitization was introduced. And when your institution is one that’s rarely visited when things are going well, offering improved experiences to constituents can have a drastic impact on how communities see their local and state institutions.
But through digitization, we can change all of this. We can create workflows and operational environments where information is accessible and results can be obtained efficiently and quickly. And along the way, we may just be able to change a few lives for the better.
Exploring the Underlying Benefits of Digitization
The bottom line is that digitization changes the way people interact with information, with government bodies, and with each other. It allows you to introduce a sense of simplicity to the complex processes that often diminish human interactions.
And yet these are only a handful of underlying, human-level benefits that digitization brings to organizations.
Join me and Susanne Korta on July 27th at 11AM EDT, as we explore the underlying benefits of digitization in Image API’s new webinar The Other Side of Going Paperless. Click here to register.
