Why Digital Transformation Is No Longer An Option

If you haven't yet digitized, you might as well throw the towel in and give your paperless competitors a round of applause. While the shift from paper to digital has been ongoing for years, many organizations remain behind the curve. The reason for this is that these organizations haven't accepted the reality that the time for digital transformation is now.

Covid-19 has forced society to adapt to a 'new normal' creating higher business expectations from both customers and employees. The truth is that a business with a clear vision of what it wants to achieve from implementing a digital process solution can rapidly put the tools in place to start onboarding for a digital transformation journey. Automating your business processes enables a wide range of opportunities such as the ability to work from home, engage with stakeholders, ease of reporting, and improved compliance. These business outcomes are simply unachievable in a paper-based environment: digitization is no longer an option.

Why Digital Transformation Is No Longer An Option

In a recent interview, FlowForma CEO Olivia Bushe says that it took Covid-19 to “truly break down office walls”, providing the tipping point for businesses to abandon the familiar and embrace change. "With people losing their jobs and so many companies struggling to survive, it’s hard to take positives out of coronavirus,” notes Bushe. “But the crisis is forcing organizations into new ways of working that will benefit them and their employees in the long run.” 

Capturing The Benefits Of Digitization

Worldwide, a work-from-home culture has developed almost overnight. Data from polling company Gallup from a seven-day period at the end of April 2020, found that 63 percent of US employees had worked from home due to coronavirus concerns, doubling from 31 percent just three weeks earlier. In the UK, a British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) poll found that at least 54 percent of businesses in the UK were opting to use remote working to maintain business continuity during the Covid-19 pandemic*.

Remote working solutions have become business essentials without which operations for many companies would simply cease. Though we are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, this does not mean that things will ever return to the way that they once were - which might not be a bad thing! The Forrester Research Centre predicts that by 2030 Hybrid Work will be a standard expectation, they also indicate that by the end of this year, 21% of information workers will work primarily from home**.

FlowForma enables remote working and hybrid working by putting all of your processes online, making them available everywhere, at any time with our Mobile App. Anywhere, hybrid work strategies offer firms the opportunity to capture numerous benefits for employees and the business alike and Forrester recommends that investment in technology is key to successful hybrid working. Though implementing a hybrid work system into your organization may appear daunting, the benefits far outweigh the challenge: Forbes has gone as far as stating that remote work increases worker productivity*** and with FlowForma, you can do with no code! 

Hurdles to Change

Office culture is changing. Businesses such as Twitter and Square are among those to have virtually told all employees to work from home forever. Whether they work for large multinational organizations or SMEs, many employees are finding themselves working from home more often – some sporadically, others periodically and many permanently.

Due to this change, many businesses have begun viewing process excellence solutions as essential. According to FlowForma’s Head of Solutions, Shay O’Connor, the biggest indicator of this mindset change has been from those who have already implemented FlowForma Process Automation and now want to use it more. Many customers are finding that their current requirement is to expand digital process automation initiatives at speed due to the value they found after digitizing a limited number of processes. “Having taken care of a few core processes and finding the software is already paying for itself, many are now wishing they had digitized more processes – especially in hindsight of Covid-19,” O’Connor observes, adding that while many businesses have no concept of how much digitization costs, they should counter any additional cost by looking at how much they are currently losing. "There is no downside to digitizing your processes,” he states. “You get far more bang for your buck, you get so much more efficient and you can operate much more effectively.”

Stop Delaying Digitization

Start Small to Scale

One of the biggest concerns that many organizations have surrounding their digital transformation journeys is the potential scale of transforming processes that have been carried out in the same manner for many years. Regarding scale and apprehension about introducing digital processes, Grant Thornton IT Manager William McCann remarks: “As with any new software there’s a mindset change for people, but it helps that they can see tangible benefits straight away. The more processes I’ve automated, the more the business sees the benefits, and the more we want to use it and bring more processes online.”

The benefits simply outweigh the effort:

• Abingdon & Witney College in Oxfordshire, UK, introduced seven digitized processes via the FlowForma Process Automation tool on Microsoft Office 365, which its staff were able to create for themselves. In just one year, the institution saved more than 5,000 employee hours.
• FlowForma worked with insurance brokers Aon at its Irish offices to replace legacy processes with automated processes. The aim was to save time and money, but the initiative went much further with at least 30 processes built.

We need you to start small in order to achieve big. FlowForma's Solutions Architect and Product Strategist, Paul Stone, was a recent guest on The Digital Transformation Podcast. During this interview, Paul shares his three tips for successful automation. The first, and most important tip that he gives is starting small. Paul explains that he would "look to identify business processes in your organization, which if they were digitized would have a real impact." Once you find this, you can contact us here at FlowForma, and start to champion the process!

* PEX 2020 Whitepaper - 'Why Digitization Is No Longer An Option. 
**Forrester report, 29.03.21 - 'Seize The Anywhere Work', J. P. Gownder.
*** Forbes article, 30.03.21 - 'Remote Work Evolves Into Hybrid Work And Productivity Rises, The Data Shows', J. McKendrick.

Try FlowForma Today

Why not take the first step in your digital transformation journey today by taking a free 14 day trial of the FlowForma Process Automation tool! Our process experts can offer you a glimpse of what your processes would look like in digital format and the time and cost savings expected by moving your business processes online.