Between rising costs and a highly competitive job market, companies across verticals are struggling to find office staff who can process the large amounts of information businesses deal with every day. That’s leading to operational holes and additional work for the current staff, which is leading to stress, frustration and overworked employees.
Adding to the headcount, however, has been a challenge for companies today.
“The cost for employees is on the rise, as is the cost to do business,” says Jeremiah Wagner, a Sales Manager at Blue Technologies. “Companies are looking for areas where, without cutting people, they can reallocate resources to address pressing business needs.”
Smart Business spoke with Wagner about how companies are leveraging business solutions to improve processes amid shortages to budgets and workforce.
What business solutions can help companies deal with today’s challenges?
There are several options available based on a company’s current environment and what exactly the business is trying to accomplish. Through workflow automation, with functions such as Optical Character Recognition, rules can be engineered to create processes that move paper, whether digitally or hardcopy, through a cycle without human hands touching it.
Through these solutions, workflows are customized to an individual company’s process. They’re engineered on-site to capture either entire documents or extract only what’s needed at each stage. That information can be used to do batch indexing. So, rather than have a person scan in a multiple work orders, records or other documents, these customizable solutions can capture the exact data needed and automatically transfer it elsewhere when needed.
While, through customization, these solutions can automate many processes for businesses across industries, it’s important to work with a provider that understands the industry and works as a partner to put a solution in place that is tailored toward the organization’s specific needs.
What does implementation entail?
The implementation piece, and the time it takes to get the company up to speed with the solution, largely hinges on how much an organization is trying to accomplish through the solution. Sometimes implementation can be accomplished in a day; other times, with trial-and-error testing, it could be weeks.
Much of getting employees up to speed on using the software and the solutions happens behind the scenes. Once the process has been engineered based on what the company is trying to capture and where that information needs to go, often the solution is going to work with the existing technology employees are already using. It’s typically seamless, automating many of the once-manual steps that exist in the legacy process.
This, however, is not software that can be download and then immediately put into practice. It takes an experienced professional to incorporate it into an existing enterprise system and workflow.
Who can help companies select the right solutions?
Choose a provider that’s going to take a consultative approach. They’ll work with the senior management team to get a strategic overview of the company, then have conversations across departments to better understand how the solution can be phased in and then branch out to every part of the organization. It’s also good to have a vendor that understands the company’s vertical and how paper moves across the business, digitally or physically.
Some vendors will offer solutions and expect the business to conform to how it operates. However, it’s better to work with a provider that offers multiple solutions that can be implemented and customized based on specific needs with minimal change to existing processes, leading to an easy and seamless fit for employees, which increases adoption rates.
Investing in backend solutions can make a big impact to the bottom line, helping to get the company’s product out the door faster while also relieving the stress overworked employees tend to face in a cost-cutting environment without adding to the headcount. ●
INSIGHTS Technology is brought to you by Blue Technologies, Inc.
