2020 the year to digitise – If not ‘now’, when?

Technological disruption is reshaping the business landscape, offering both opportunities and challenges. Digital transformation provides a potential solution for businesses seeking a competitive edge in this environment. By fundamentally changing the way organisations operate, it allows businesses to respond effectively to new technologies and protect their organisation from future disruption.

In the past few weeks we have witnessed and deeply felt what this disruption could do to businesses in all industries and markets. Until we know exactly what the future holds, our businesses cannot be completely future proof.

I was chatting to my neighbour over the wall this morning and he was saying he retrenched some staff yesterday, business is down more than 40% and how he is not sure what the future holds. None of us know what the future holds and with not knowing comes fear. Fear that we will not be prepared and fear because we will never know what to prepare for. Very often fear can paralyse us, leaving us so confused that we end up just floating with what comes our way and trying to overcome obstacles haphazardly as they come in our path. But there are better ways. One can prepare by finding out how the right technology can be implemented to help your business in day to day operating and be used when circumstances change – for the worse or for better. The challenge we each have is how will we adapt to this new way of doing business, how does it look, what do we need to do differently? Be innovative, think long and hard and use your imagination, be proactive. An old saying comes to mind and it is more true now than ever before, 'adapt or die'.

How does one do this? Think about your own organisation, what does your “new work” environment look like?  Meetings happen in Zoom, Houseparty and Skype instead of boardrooms. Our 'office' is virtual, we may not have the same premises we had before. We may be renting 'ad hoc' meeting rooms for those occasions we need a face to face meeting with correct distancing processes in place.This is all well and good and we have had a crash course in working like this over the last few weeks but what does the reality of what we are doing actually look like? We have VPN connections rapidly put together and other forms of accessing what we need have been 'hacked together' to enable some sort of normality but where are the gaps? 

Our solutions are affordable with costs from only R8500.00 to start with and scalable up to any size project needed. Don’t be paralysed by fear, be a true leader and change agent, stay one step ahead be vigilant in the face of what the future throws at you.

One thing that is part of our daily function is that we work with pieces of paper on a daily basis. Invoices, purchase orders, delivery notes, POD's, receipts and other proofs of payment. These documents pass through multiple hands daily to record our progress, what we have achieved and how we have transacted. The problem is these pieces of paper are generated or delivered to and start from a single location but that is not where the staff members are that need to deal with them. Now more than ever we need to be able to turn these into electronic documents that may be shared in order for the daily work and collaboration steps to be actione.

Let’s look at how we do this. Use of a dedicated scanner that enables 'one touch' scanning that sends our documents where they need to be. With the correct device these images can be small, indexed and ready for action. The Avision range of scanners offer the opportunity to direct the scanned images to any 3rd party app, DMS, shared folder or user on a shared network enabling quick access to named documents for access or collaboration especially when combined with an existing solution.

This approach will have a minimum impact on our data consumption while at the same time maximizing the functionality of what we require to remain fully functional. Every document coming in that needs to be processed will need to be scanned and forwarded to the relevant employee for action. It’s time to get a dedicated scanner and get this ingrained into your work flow. Our solutions are affordable with costs from only R8500.00 to start with and scalable up to any size project needed. Don’t be paralysed by fear, be a true leader and change agent, stay one step ahead be vigilant in the face of what the future throws at you.