In order to survive in today’s challenging marketplace, staying status quo is simply not an option. And, for organizations that are paper-intensive, an inability to move forward in the digital age can leave them lagging behind competitors when it comes to productivity, customer service, and overall business efficiency.

In a new report produced by Forrester, organizations reiterated the value of going digital in order to advance company goals, manage company growth, and meet customer demand.

Imaging-defined in the report as software for scanning, capturing, indexing, retrieving, processing, and archiving digital images of documents and electronic forms-continues to outperform other enterprise content management technologies such as web content management, content services, and XML publishing, therefore placing a high business value on its application. Imaging continues to become more and more relevant as organizations strive for increased productivity and seamless workflow across multiple processes.

Those organizations that implement imaging solutions can expect multiple benefits, including:

  • Improved productivity. Reducing and eliminating time spent handling, storing, retrieving, distributing, and destroying paper results in increased productivity.
  • Lower costs for staff and paper management. Companies who have gone digital see a reduction in the hard costs of paper procurement and storage and also recognize savings by eliminating records management staff.
  • Enhanced customer and employee satisfaction. Digital documents can be retrieved and accessed faster and more easily than paper records, with less opportunity for files to become lost or misplaced. The needs of customers can be fulfilled more efficiently when records are quickly accessed and moved through the workflow process.
  • Better content security and compliance. Scanned documents have added security and compliance thanks to user permissions and other efforts that help maintain tighter controls of confidentiality.
  • Standardization and business continuity. Organizations with offices in various locations can provide consistent records with wider accessibility. Clearly, any organization that relies heavily on paper should begin to expand imaging investments across departments. The ROI-for the company, its employees, and its customers-carries with it economic relevance that can no longer be ignored.