I don't know what that does, but it looks cool! 

Face it, the more things change, the more they stay the same.  Businesses today are faced with so many challenges that with a dizzying slew of items that corporate leaders can get hung up on when prioritizing what demands improvement and attention.  One common thing for many companies is that often the prioritization of improvement is centered on activities that improve top-line revenue production, and that’s a good thing. The only challenge is when this thinking renders back-office improvements secondary or tertiary on a consistent basis.

Why this is a problem!

You see, while top-line revenue is certainly a good indicator for the health of a business, and something that’s kind of akin to air for a human being in terms of importance, back-office document processing issues can create a plentitude of problems that no leader wants to contemplate.  And yet, probably 8 out of 10 times, corporate re-investment and attention will inevitably get drawn to the more glamorous, less prickly side that is top-line rev.   However, in today’s marketplace, by turning attention to the back office processes that have been neglected from an automation and transformation standpoint, it’s possible to achieve and extract value on numerous levels, including monetary and operational gains, risk mitigation, and strategic wins.

Document Processing Trends

Certainly, enterprise-level companies have invested the most dollars into correcting these processes, though in fairness, many of them have embraced the process punt that is offshoring.  Countries like India, the Philippines, and China present substantial dollar cost reductions and pools of technical talent that can help re-engineer and improve a documented process.  However, this is by no means a one-size-fits-all model and is thus typically embraced by the biggest of the big.

Alternatively, other large companies may deploy automation technologies, or at a minimum document management technologies. The big challenge for most mid-sized (sub $1 billion in revenue) is the cost justification and technical resources required to sustain these kinds of initiatives.  Nonetheless, people have an innate feeling and knowledge that there has to be a better way.  Much of this is credited to the drastic changes and advances that have entered the scene in recent years through the mobile revolution.  It’s never been easier to manage personal documents, photos, files, whatever- through the thousands of apps that exist to revolutionize how we live.  Similarly, things are changing on the work front, but identifying the best approach is largely a subjective exercise.

For starters, mid-sized companies are supremely aware of the capital investment costs required to enter this space, and for many, it has been a deal-breaker in the past.  What’s constant is that everyone wants to improve, but traditionally this has been unfavorable to mid and small-sized businesses, and that’s why it’s important to challenge the status quo of thinking in this space. As you’ll see in upcoming posts from us, there is a way for businesses of all sizes to participate in the document processing revolution.  We like to call it document process outsourcing and it blends state-of-the-art technology, plus best practices for managing document processes, and packages it in a pay-as-you-go model that anyone can justify.  We think that one of the key things here to unlocking the profits in these processes is to identify the latent dollars that you might be bleeding out and recoup them to be used as a source of additional reinvestment until you’re as tricked out and modded as KITT in the latter years of Knight Rider.

Stay with us over the next few weeks as we unleash more in this series on unlocking profit from transactional document processes and how to achieve performance optimization!  It’s sure to be a blast – now punch the turbo, drop the smoke screen, and get us out of here!

Schedule a free demo with our team to explore how our CloudX document processing automation software can accelerate your accounts payable processes and add efficiencies to your business!