If you’re an American, you’re probably worried about the affordability of healthcare. In fact, 80% of Americans surveyed in a recent Gallup poll admit to worrying at least a fair amount, with 55% saying they worry a “great deal.”[1] While it’s not wrong to worry about healthcare’s affordability, the issue isn’t completely out of our hands. While the high cost of care is driven by a variety of factors, one of the most significant is healthcare administrative waste. The good news, however, is that the problem isn’t anything data analytics can’t address.

Administrative expenses i.e., those not directly associated with providing goods and services to people in need of care), amount to anywhere from 15 to 30 percent of medical spending, according to Harvard economist, David M. Cutler, PhD.[2] The bulk of those expenses is spent in connection with billing and payment by providers.

While some of that expense can be attributed to provider efforts to collect payment from insurance companies, much is attributable to efforts to collect accounts receivable from patients, observes Exela’s president, Suresh Yannamani (you can learn more about Exela’s leadership team here.). During 2016, more than two-thirds of patients defaulted on hospital bills of $500 or less, and by the year 2020, that number could increase to 95%.[3]

While one might argue if healthcare weren’t so expensive, consumers wouldn’t have so much trouble paying for it, one reason healthcare providers charge as much as they do is to cover the cost of treating patients who can’t pay for services rendered. After all, if a provider has no way to cover the cost of treating patients who can’t pay, they risk going out of business i.e., unable to care for any patients at all). In other words, we’re looking at a vicious circle, where consumers can’t afford to pay for their healthcare, which further drives up the cost of healthcare, thus making it harder for consumers to pay, and so on.

What many providers might not realize, however, is the “massive potential to collect, organize, and apply payment and patient data to accounts receivable in order to keep operations running smoothly,” Yannamani points out. Some of that data, such as patient payment history, is already right there in the provider’s possession. Once in digitized format, it’s ready for the application of programmed analytics that can help the provider determine best billing practices. For example, if data analytics reveal certain patients are more likely to wait three months before paying, the provider can decide to focus their collection efforts beginning in “month two.”

Data analytics can be applied to better utilize administrative time and effort in collecting from insurance payers as well. For example, if a provider sees one payer takes months to submit payments for appendectomies while another takes only a few weeks, the provider can focus immediate efforts on the latter and gear up later for collecting on the former.

“Too many health systems waste significant time and money burying themselves in paperwork and chasing after payments,” notes Yannamani. To eliminate the waste, “health systems must use the rich payment data they collect on every transaction to inform the billing department. With a better collections strategy, systems can streamline their accounts receivable and realign valuable resources to where they are more valuable.”

You can read all of Yannamani’s observations and recommendations on this topic here. Learn more about Exela’s Healthcare Payer solutions and Exela’s Revenue Cycle Management solutions. In all cases, our mission is to help you identify and recover all sums due.

For Exela’s in-depth look at the inefficiencies that drive the Journal of the American Medical Association to estimate waste in the healthcare system to be as high as $935 billion (approximately 25% of total healthcare spending), please check out Exela’s Q4 edition of PluggedIN, Exela’s quarterly thought leadership publication: Tell Us Where It Hurts: How Tech Can Heal Healthcare.

[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/248159/healthcare-once-again-tops-list-americans-worries.aspx

[2] https://www.help.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Cutler.pdf

Inefficiencies in the healthcare industry cost the people of the U.S. around $935 billion in annual spending. That’s approximately one-quarter of all dollars spent on U.S. healthcare. The latest issue of PluggedIN, Exela’s quarterly thought leadership news magazine, was devoted to discussing the roots of those inefficiencies, and what can be done to turn things around before losing even more ground (see: PluggedIN: Tell Us Where It Hurts: How Tech Can Heal Healthcare). As the Everest Group has noted, digital transformation can address much of healthcare’s inefficiency. Yet the industry’s adoption of digital transformation initiatives has been “modest”. It’s not there’s any shortage of transformative technology. Rather, the problem appears to be the industry’s reluctance to embrace the changes digital transformation promises.

So, why the reluctance? Experts pose a variety of explanations, but most boil down to one of the following:

The misconception that medical consumers aren’t chomping at the bit for change

Because relatively few patients seem to be jumping on board with digital health services, many healthcare executives believe patients simply aren’t interested in those services. In fact, the reason patients are slow to adopt digital healthcare is the services being offered aren’t actually services they’re interested in—or worse, they’re of poor quality. If better digital services were offered, it’s entirely possible adoption rates would increase.

The “go big or go home” myth of healthcare transformation

In many industries (and not just healthcare), there’s a misconception that digital offerings have to “dazzle.” In reality, according to research conducted by McKinsey, healthcare consumers would be happy with just the basics, starting with simplifying navigation of the increasingly complex healthcare system.

Learn how Exela’s Patient Portal improves the experience for payers and providers, along with medical consumers, by simplifying such routine tasks as patient registration, eligibility verification, billing, and payment.

The provider shortage

“In the face of the physician shortage in the U.S. doctors don’t have time to trade out their proven workflows to take a risk on a solution that may or may not be successful, and will almost certainly take time to learn and implement into their practice,” notes HIT Consultant, which also notes the way around this isn’t continuing to do things the same way they’ve been done all along but perhaps pushing for changes to the payment structure so that providers don’t feel pressured to pack their daily schedules with patient appointments.[1]  In the meantime, it may be worth thinking about starting with small changes that have the potential to save providers time—if not by scheduling fewer appointments, then by simplifying “time-sucking” administrative tasks such as medical billing. Exela’s Healthcare Payer solutions and Revenue Cycle Management solutions are designed to save time while eliminating errors, reducing recovery times, and improving recovery rates.

[1] https://hitconsultant.net/2019/12/04/digital-transformation-in-healthcare-not-happening/

In our increasingly connected world, is the internet poised to keep up with demand? Don’t assume that to be the case, warns Mark Fairchild, Exela’s Smart Office President in a recent article for Read/Write. Regular readers of the Exela Blog may already know that Exela’s Smart Office is a collection of solutions designed to build a better, more efficient workplace by driving productivity and optimizing customer experience and employee satisfaction. Many of Exela’s Smart Office offerings incorporate various iterations of the Internet of Things, which, as we discussed here, relies on collecting data in digital form from all the “things” that are connected to the Internet that are not necessarily your computer.

According to Statista, it’s expected there will be 75 billion “things” connected by the year 2025,[1] and, Mark points out technological advances will enable them to perform within a range that’s four times greater, twice the speed, and eight times the bandwidth of current connected devices. Now, add to that the fact that more and more businesses are not only jumping on the “smart office” bandwagon but also entering data so-collected into business processes to take them from manual to automated. But all of this will require increasingly fast and consistent data transfer, to meet the increased demand for connectivity and automation. Currently, it appears the U.S., which is ranked way down at tenth in the world for fixed broadband speeds, has quite a way to go in that regard.

Why is the US falling behind in internet speed?

Mark suggests it’s the current infrastructure, which he believes will need to be upgraded to keep up with the expected demand. “Only so much data can be crammed through coaxial cables and copper wires,” he writes. Unfortunately, the oligopolized structure of the U.S. internet service provider (ISP) market disincentivizes upgrades.

“In a more open market, heightened competition might push ISPs to offer the latest innovations in data transmissions (such as fiber optic networks) in order to maintain a healthy market share,” writes Mark. That’s why he suggests it could be advantageous to open the market to more providers and put more competitors in the space. But opening the market requires repeal and/or revision of those laws that made monopolies possible in the first place. Even then, opening the market comes with built-in challenges, including the enormous investment that entering the ISP space entails--the time and money involved in gaining access to public rights of way for the purpose of placing broadband wires.

Three possible solutions

One alternative Mark puts forth is for ISPs and governments to form public-private partnerships to create a new entry into the market (essentially, a publicly funded but privately run organization). Another option would be classifying internet service as a public utility. “Utilities can be strictly regulated for quality and cost controls because these services are considered too important to leave entirely up to market forces,” Mark points out. Ideally, this would open up internet access to more people as well, including the marginalized. A third option would be eschewing land-based internet infrastructure altogether and moving to space instead.

Now that one sounds intriguing, no? If not to you then at least to Elon Musk, who is already on the project. His SpaceX is in the process of constructing a constellation of satellites — Starlink — to provide space-based internet access. In fact, late last year, Fortune reported Musk was able to send a Tweet through space, using Starlink.

Is the future now?

It’s possible Starlink’s space-based broadband will become widely available in the U.S. as early as this year. We’ll stay tuned and keep you updated. In the meantime, find out why Exela’s Smart Office isn’t just good for business; it’s also good for the planet.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/471264/iot-number-of-connected-devices-worldwide/

Exela Technologies is paving the way for the future of billing and payment in the UK through our Request to Pay solution platform, or RtP. In order to shed some light on RtP, we decided to share details about Request to Pay, its implementation, industry challenges, and more during our webinar, “Request to Pay: In Action!”

RtP software emphasizes communication and transactional efficiency for both payor and payee, allowing for secure messaging to take place before bill payment. The service is meant to overlay on top of the existing payments infrastructure to help businesses, organizations, and individuals handle bill payments with more ease, flexibility, and efficiency.

How Request to Pay Works

RtP allows a biller or payee to send an electronic request for the payment to the debtor account directly. The payor receives this request via an electronic interface such as a mobile banking app, reflecting the requested amount and the due date of the payment request.

On the payor side, the platform offers options that include making the payment in full, sending a partial payment, sending messages, raising requests for an extension, and more.

A Request to Pay solution offers both sides of a transaction greater flexibility while making payments. It also increases transaction transparency, reduces the cost for billers, and gives both parties a better transaction experience.

Integrated communication and payment platforms are poised to become far more commonplace. Join us to learn more about this exciting technology!

Request to Pay: In Action!

In our upcoming webinar, “Request to Pay: In Action!” you can get a look at this exciting new technology and learn more about how it will reshape the payments landscape. On Thursday, June 24, join Exela’s moderator Chris Vincent and a group of experts and panelists including:

• Martin Kirby - Head of Order to Cash | Business Stream
• Simon Brooks - Faster Payments Service Line Manager | Pay.UK
• Richard Lean -RtP Product Expert | Exela Technologies
• Paul Horlock - Chief Payments Officer | Santander
• Paul Fairless - Director Business Development, Payments and Banking | Sage

The webinar will include demos of Exela’s RtP app, an in-depth look at the benefits for billers and payors, a discussion about the future of billing and payments, and plenty of time for Q A with the panelists.

Register for the webinar today!

If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that the day-to-day status quo can change much more quickly than we ever imagined. Business disruptions may be unexpected, but that doesn’t mean companies can’t prepare for them with digital transformation.

While disruptions can take many forms - from a flood or fire, to a global pandemic, to a big boat stuck in an important waterway hobbling international trade for days - there are a few common characteristics they share and a few different challenges they create, including: loss of assets, restricted cash flows, disruptions to supply chains, and loss of productivity.

In many ways, lost assets are just the surface level of disaster-related losses a business may endure. Physical assets and property can be covered by insurance, after all, and when a state of emergency is declared, most governments offer some form of additional aid for impacted businesses.

Lost productivity and prolonged inability to maintain critical processes can have a much longer-lasting impact on a business’s health, and are, unfortunately, more complicated to prepare for than simply taking out an insurance policy. The best way to ensure business continuity in the face of a disaster is to build your business in a way that specifically protects against them. There are various ways to do that, but investing in business process automation technology, intelligent outsourcing and vendor management, and your company’s overall digital transformation are excellent places to start.

Relying on Digital Solutions

For many common transactions, the pandemic completely flipped the script. For years, in-person interactions were the standard, and taken as a given. But, as people began avoiding contact and governments started issuing stay at home orders to preserve public health and safety, “why not just do it in person?” quickly became “how can we do this digitally?”

The realities of the pandemic put the benefits of digital transformation into stark relief, as businesses that were better equipped to move critical processes and functions over to digital platforms and empower remote workers were able to make a smooth transition to the new normal. Other companies found themselves in a much more challenging position.

Digital transformation, wherever possible, is a key, foundational step toward positioning a business to being fully prepared for the worst. When disaster strikes, efficiency becomes even more important. Digital technology makes it easier to keep the gears moving no matter what. Digitization also allows for cloud-hosting of critical processes and information, which in turn enables businesses to protect themselves using a hub and spoke model.

Hub & Spoke Model

Digital transformation makes it easier than ever for businesses to avoid putting all their eggs in one basket - or all their core processes and essential assets in one building. By ensuring that no one specific location is so important that the entire operation grinds to a halt if it experiences an outage, businesses can avoid costly shutdowns because of a local or regional issue.

For example, Exela’s hub and spoke model protects data and builds in process redundancies by creating a central platform (the hub) hosted and maintained by Exela, which operates alongside client sites, Exela’s offshore resources, and in some cases specialized disaster recovery “dark” sites (all of which are the spokes).

This hub and spokes model is an excellent way to disperse critical information and processes in order to protect them. When critical services or processes are unable to continue from their typical location, volumes can be easily transferred digitally to another location, avoiding missed deadlines or gaps in service.

Exela builds these protections into all of our solutions, ensuring that we’re able to continue supporting your business and help you maintain service to your clients and customers even in the event of an unexpected disaster. Contact us today to discover how we can build solution that supports your business and builds resiliency. 

While a significant portion of business is still conducted via manual and paper-based processes, the speed and convenience of digital solutions, such as paper digitization,are quickly becoming the norm. Businesses across all industries are turning to digital technology to remain competitive, in some cases redefining aspects of their core processes to take better advantage of the benefits digital solutions can provide.

While a complete digital overhaul may not be necessary for every business, it is a great time to start looking into how your organization can begin its digital transformation. After all, with worldwide spending on digital transformation expected to reach $2.3 trillion in 2023, it will be beneficial for all businesses to have some digitization under their belts in order to remain competitive and begin to integrate more digital solutions in the future.

Paper Digitization: A Good Place to Start

Even though it may sometimes feel like we’re well into a new digital age, where even common household items are connected to the internet and labeled “smart,” many essential business processes still rely on physical paper documentation. And while paper has played a critical role in the recording and sharing of information since its very invention, there are many downsides to an overreliance on paper.

Storing vital, unique, or sensitive information on paper can open it up to a variety of risks. Paper documents can be lost, damaged, incorrectly filed, or accessed by unauthorized people. Plus, it's not easy to access physical documents locked away in paper archives, and storage can be expensive and require lots of space.

With an advanced high volume and high speed scanner, capable of rapidly and accurately transforming paper documents into fully digital assets, paper digitization is a relatively easy and cost-effective way to kickstart your digital transformation.

One Click to Access Information with Paper Digitization

One of the major drawbacks of paper is that it is in many ways a prison for information. Information stored on a paper document cannot be easily shared and utilized by other systems and functions. Digitizing documents is an important first step to making information more accessible and truly leveraging its real potential.

IntelliScan offers a range of high speed scanners and can be paired with OpenBox to capture the data. It can classify and index, creating a robust end-to-end paper digitization and information extraction platform. This also makes integration of further downstream automation and digital transformation solutions easier, as much of your business’s critical data and information will already be available. So you can share copies through email, take printouts, and always have a safe digitized copy with you.

Don’t Miss a Single Word

Some businesses may be hesitant to embrace digitization for fear of losing information in the process. Exela's Document Digitization solution uses advanced scanning technology that offers precision optics and illumination provide superior image quality. Our scanners performs in-line image quality assurance (IQA) monitoring by testing every image in real-time against a baseline of user-defined quality metrics which detect potential defects.

Increase Productivity with Reliable and Speedy Paper Digitization

Reliable high speed scanners digitizing your documents can improve your productivity and efficiency in other business processes. Digital documents can be handled by bots and other automated business processes, allowing your employees to focus more time and energy on higher-priority tasks that provide a greater service to your customers.

Make Historical Records Accessible

No matter the organization's size, there is always a ton of information stored in company archives. A single piece of paper may not seem to take up much space, but when you’re dealing with years or even decades' worth of old forms, case studies, records, case files, accounts, and other documents, it can really start to add up fast. Digitizing these old archives can not only save on valuable floor space, but also make backlogs of information, a potentially valuable resource, more easily accessible.

The benefits of paper digitization reach nearly every facet of business operations, and by now, every organization knows that digital transformation is the way forward and is vital for their success. There’s no denying the need to transform - the deciding factors are how you and where you start. Get in touch with one of our specialists and understand how Exela can assist you in your digital transformation path.

Today digital technologies contribute to the transformation of large parts of our economy and society. We can all agree that digital innovation has fundamentally changed the world as we know it, and the transformation is still ongoing. Countless observations of the shift to digital are seen in our day-to-day lives, both immediately, in the new ways that we communicate and consume information, and subtly by changes in manufacturing, security, and more.

In a short period, industries that appeared steady have been flipped on their head. The power of this disruptive force is transforming every single sector.

How Digital Innovation Impacts Industries

To remain competitive in this digital age, organizations must consider themselves as a technology business since possibly every customer’s journey today starts digitally. By leveraging opportunities, predictive data, and analytics, organizations better understand both, the customers’ behavior and internal performance. This will help businesses grow revenue, cut costs, and even build additional revenue streams with new digital capabilities.

Besides transforming business models, digital innovation also leads to a changing entrepreneurial culture, helping industries/ventures grow faster. Digital innovation is changing the business landscape at breakneck speed, enhancing traditional business models and processes with digital technologies, or inventing entirely new engagement models.

For example, with predictive maintenance, we now can have sensors embedded in machinery capable of transmitting data to pinpoint when and where maintenance is needed. This improves safety and efficiency by ensuring parts that require immediate attention are instantly addressed resulting in saving valuable time, helping keep up productivity, and saving costs in the long run.

Moving Forward with Digital Transformation

Over time it has been proven that digital disruption has the potential to reshape the market, upset incumbents, and lead to large-scale shifts more rapidly than any other business trend. However, not even half the businesses can confidently admit to having a strong digital business strategy in place.

It is naive to assume that digitization and innovation are restricted to technology or digitally native firms. For non-tech companies, digital innovation is one of the most salient trends in the global marketplace today.

How confident do you feel?

Download this ebook and get access to more detailed information on Digital Transformation and understand how it can help you reshape your business. 

Download now!

The world is a very different place than it was this time last year. The COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped virtually every aspect of our daily lives, exposed vulnerabilities in many businesses, and accelerated the long-term shift toward a more agile, mobile, and remote workforce. As businesses strive to adapt to the changing landscape, tracking and optimizing workforce productivity, both onsite and for remote work, has never been more important.

Remote Working is Here to Stay

Even before the pandemic made traveling on public transportation and coming into the office a risky proposition, workers across industries were increasingly expecting greater flexibility with regard to working remotely. As public safety concerns grew and stay-at-home orders were rolled out, many organizations were finally forced to find ways to fully facilitate flexible work arrangements.

One of the biggest concerns leaders often cited with telecommuting was how it would impact productivity. However, a recent study found that 94% of employers say productivity has either remained the same or even increased since the start of the pandemic, despite so many employees working from home. The survey also revealed that 73% of employers anticipate a quarter or more of their employees to continue working from home, even post-pandemic, including 67% who expect at least half of their workers to do so.

With that many employers open to offering flexible schedules, often a strong incentive for job seekers, even businesses that may not yet have implemented remote work arrangements will feel the pressure to follow suit in order to compete for talent. Competitive organizations will want to accommodate the trend, but adapting a workplace to support an increasing mix of onsite and remote workers requires more than just VPNs and video conferencing systems.

A Time Clock for Remote and Onsite Employees

While productivity may not have plummeted as some feared it would, businesses shouldn’t get complacent. A 2012 study found that “dull” tasks were often completed more efficiently in a cubicle environment free of distractions that may be common in a worker’s home. And in the current economic atmosphere, productivity and resource management are especially important to business success.

The possibility of future mandates and guidelines keeping employees from coming into the office makes having a centralized time tracking system capable of servicing not only onsite hours, but also remote or work-from-home hours, is essential.

Exela’s Contactless Entry and Exit Solution

To help businesses quickly adapt to these changes, Exela launched Contactless Entry & Exit (CEE), a flexible time and location reporting system designed to make logging hours fast and convenient for employees, regardless of where they’re working from on a given day. The system combines a sensor module, an employee badge system, contactless card readers, and online time tracking software to quickly and accurately log employee location and time information.

Onsite workers just need to wave their badge near a sensor to clock in and out. For remote workers, the system is compatible with desktop and mobile devices, allowing them to clock-in or clock-out with the tap of a button. Team leads and HR professionals can then access this data, along with data analytics tools, through CEE’s reporting dashboard. The data can also be seamlessly fed into an existing payroll infrastructure for streamlined payroll administration.

The Future of Time and Attendance

Smart technology is developing new conveniences many never thought possible. Future updates to Contactless Entry & Exit will eliminate the need to even stop and scan a badge in much the same way Amazon Go stores are eliminating the need to wait in a checkout line to buy groceries. Longer range badges could also provide valuable location data instantly in the event of an emergency evacuation, and may even be applied to enhance social distancing protocols and assist in accurate contact tracing.

Safely reopening offices and other workplaces will be a tricky and often slow process. Businesses will have to continually monitor the situation and be prepared to adapt social distancing guidelines and similar safety procedures in their locations to maintain the safety of their employees and customers. Contactless Entry & Exit was created to help businesses do just that, and make it easier for them to support flexible work arrangements for their employees - keeping them safe and productive, no matter where they are.

Learn more about how Exela’s Contactless Entry & Exit system, part of our Smart Office solutions, can help your business.

When COVID-19 hit, suddenly many of us had to adjust to an entirely new work atmosphere. Social distancing became crucial to slowing the spread, and within weeks, remote working arrangements became the norm for more than half of the country. Now, even with many businesses around the country reopening, many people have mixed feelings about returning to the office. As of mid-May, 7 in 10 American workers were still working remotely all or part of the time, and just 1 in 4 say that they would return to the office if it was up to them.¹

As they look to reopen, businesses may need to find innovative solutions that will reassure their workers that they are taking serious precautions to protect employee health. 

Masks and temperature checks may become more common in the workplace, at least for a while. But the increased desire to maintain social distancing, and the potential for future temporary regional lockdowns to prevent a second wave, may help fuel some bigger changes and modernizations in many offices. Here are some of the new technologies and services that can help businesses provide a safe working environment while also adding new conveniences and cost-saving opportunities.

Contactless Lobbies

Protecting against a virus that can easily spread through common interactions will mean limiting as much face-to-face communication as possible. That person-to-person contact often begins with a greeting in the reception area, but that no longer needs to be the case. Exela’s Intelligent Kiosks enable guests to check in with zero human interaction. Greet guests with a pre-recorded message rather than a living, breathing, potentially contagious human, and allow them to self-register, confirm their arrival, get directions, and print their guest badge. The kiosk will even send an automated notification to the host so that they know exactly where the guest is and when they arrived.

Of course, sometimes it’s nice to be able to interact with an actual human rather than a software system, despite the threat of transferable illnesses. If a guest requires assistance with the check-in process, the Intelligent Kiosk allows them to summon a Virtual Lobby Ambassador at any time via text, audio, or video chat. A Virtual Lobby Ambassador will assist your guests with their needs or answer any questions they may have.

Mobile Facility Passes

The fact that we all carry devices capable of receiving emails and image files without physical contact can make it much easier to continue to follow social distancing guidelines, even as offices reopen. For example, a Mobile Facility Pass, stored on a visitor’s smartphone, allows both employees and guests a contactless solution for displaying security clearance. It can also be used to share useful information like maps of the building or WiFi login information, all without the need for face-to-face interaction.

Intelligent Lockers

As we all adjust to the constraints of social distancing, contactless delivery has become a popular option for those hoping to make purchases and support businesses without risking the trip to potentially crowded shopping centers or stores. Smart lockers enable contactless delivery in a number of ways, while also providing a convenient storage option for employees.

Exela’s Intelligent Lockers can be accessed through the built-in touchscreen interface, but they can just as well be integrated with RFID, QR code, or biometric recognition technologies for a fully touchless experience. Intelligent Lockers offer flexible layouts and designs, improved access controls, anytime availability, and complete chain-of-custody tracking. They provide an excellent contactless means of exchanging, shipping, receiving, or storing goods.

Digital Mailrooms

Intelligent Lockers are great at limiting face-to-face interactions in the delivery process, but a fully integrated Digital Mailroom can take it even one step further. With Digital Mailroom, your physical mail is rerouted to a secure processing facility where it can be scanned and digitized with advanced ICR and OCR technology for completely electronic delivery. This not only helps keep your workers safe, but also centralizes your communications, and enables remote workers to access important business mail from wherever they happen to be.

Final Thoughts

Exela Smart Office solutions like these make it easier for workers to return to the office with confidence. The convenience and security these solutions provide will help keep people safe, put minds at ease, and help everyone adjust to the next normal.

COVID-19 is impacting more than just the way businesses operate their physical offices. Learn more about how the pandemic is speeding up companies’ digital transformation.

1. https://news.gallup.com/poll/311375/reviewing-remote-work-covid.aspx

With the impact COVID-19 is having on global economies, many business leaders recognize that digital transformation is more essential than ever to ensure the survival of their companies. But digital transformation can be a massive technological and cultural undertaking, and dealing with something so expansive can leave many wondering where to even begin.

Here’s a good place to start: ask yourself what outcome you want out of your digital transformation.

Set Digital Transformation Goals

For many organizations, maintaining a competitive edge is the central motivation driving their digital transformation, but it helps to narrow your focus and be specific when it comes to what you’re hoping to accomplish. Some companies digitally transform in order to provide better value to their customers by offering new products and services. For others, the competitive edge comes from streamlining internal processes and capitalizing on new efficiencies digital technology can offer.

Establish a Baseline

Before you can start making changes to your business’s digital landscape, it’s important to assess it as it currently exists. Without a centralized digital transformation plan, investment in new technology at your company was likely done piecemeal, with many separate, smaller groups adopting various tools to solve their own challenges. Going from an inefficient and costly patchwork system to a streamlined company-wide solution is what digital transformation is all about.

Work with department heads and team leaders to develop a map of the digital tools and processes that are already in place throughout your organization. This will help you identify specific pain points and inefficiencies you can aim to resolve through digital transformation, and creates a grounded case for why your digital transformation is so important.

Get Leadership On Board

Digital transformation represents not only a technological shift, but a cultural one as well. So getting support from the highest levels of leadership early on is critical. Be prepared to demonstrate the ways that taking your operations digital will help your organization better meet the needs of your customers and keep up with the evolving marketplace.

Start Simple

In many ways, this is an important continuation of the previous step. Any major change to the way a company does business is going to have detractors. The type of changes a digital transformation brings will attract not only outright nay-sayers, but also plenty of entrenched internal stakeholders who are simply used to the way things have been done and are resistant to change. Even if they’ve agreed to the initiative, there are those who will be ready to abandon it at the first hint that it may not be working.

That’s why it’s important to start with a win - even if it’s a small one. Identify a simple digital project that has the potential to drive real cost savings and also enable further digitization of other business processes in the future.

Here are a few good entry points where you can kick-start an organizational digital transformation:

1. Digitizing paper workflows

Taking traditionally paper-based documents and transforming them into digital versions can immediately reduce costs and improve security, but can also enable further downstream digitization as your transformation gains momentum. One way to start this process might be transitioning to a digital mailroom, which enables remote workers, centralizes communications, and improves document security.

2. Cloud migration

Cloud storage enables users to access data and documents on any chosen device, anywhere in the world, connecting disparate business functions and teams and enabling greater communication and collaboration. Similarly, cloud-based systems and tools provide businesses a more agile, efficient, and cost-effective alternative to one-off, customized solutions.

Plus, like digitizing paper workflows, migrating your storage and processes to cloud-based systems is a great way to enable further digital transformation downstream.

3. Robotic Process Automation

Digital transformation seeks to streamline internal processes and produce better outcomes - two things robotic process automation (RPA) is very good at.

RPA bots are designed to perform rule-based tasks like data entry, data transfer, and data validation, and can often do so faster and more accurately than human workers. By putting these bots to work, businesses can streamline operations while keeping employees more engaged in their work and focused on their customers.

Conclusion

As companies all over the world face new, unprecedented challenges, the long-term benefits of digital transformation can provide much needed stability and even a competitive advantage. Getting started is just a matter of having a plan, getting support, and taking it one step at a time.

One of the key ways digital transformation helps companies maintain business continuity in the face of unexpected disruptions is by enabling remote workers. To learn more, check out How Digital Transformation Makes Working from Home Work.