Technology to support a hybrid reality
Against this backdrop, investment in the right technology is crucial. The focus should be on ensuring that normal company processes, such as Accounts Payable, or hiring processes can still function effectively despite more workers opting to stay remote on a part-time or full-time basis. Digitisation will be an important part of this remote-proofing, given that teams can’t work on physical documents together easily. By transforming physical documents into digital data, employees are not only making it available to team members based at home, but ensuring they are able to continue working on documents themselves even if they return home – enabling effective solo and team hybrid working.
Nearly half (49%) of business leaders view the digitisation of paper-based processes to be very important to business transformation initiatives
. However, despite the emphasis on transformation, 65% of IT decision makers believe paper will still be important to the workspace by 2025
. Regardless of developments in digital technology, previous predictions for the heralded ‘paperless office’ have not come to pass. In fact, even under such extreme conditions such as during the pandemic, during which digitisation increases, companies are often still unable to replace paper workflows with 100% digital
. The reality is that most companies still require physical documents at some point in common company workflows, whether that’s because they start in paper, or end in it.
What does this mean for investment? It means that at least in the future we can anticipate, IT managers will need to invest in technology which supports effective hybrid ways of working.