Over the past 18 months, companies met new challenges associated with remote work, supply chain issues and other consequences of a global economic slowdown. As we head into 2022, digital transformation is more important than ever. According to the Gartner Technology Roadmap for 2021-2023, this time around, it’s not only about increasing the speed and efficiency of business processes -- technology investments must also enhance your company’s resilience.
Resilience can be defined as the ability to rebound and preserve the viability of your business despite adversity and an unpredictable economic climate. Document management (DM), and other digital tools, are no longer only viewed as a cost center. They are recognized as an integral part of a company’s business strategy. Today, business process automation is the foundation on which companies build out products and services, and operate research & development, customer service, daily operations and talent acquisition.
In light of this, it’s time to make sure your company is future-ready. What do you need to know to stay ahead of the game? Understanding these 4 tech trends will set you up for success in 2022 and beyond.
1. A strong technology foundation
IDC, a global provider of market intelligence and advisory services, predicts that “By 2022, 70% of all organizations will have accelerated use of digital technologies, transforming existing business processes to drive customer engagement, employee productivity, and business resiliency.”
Now is the time to invest in a solid technology infrastructure to keep up with the pace of other companies that have already started the process. Installing a document management solution can jumpstart your digital transformation. It is a central hub for your company’s data, documents and workflow processes that allows authorized users to work from anywhere, on any device.2. Company-wide hyperautomation
Hyperautomation is the practice of automating as many slow manual processes and tasks as possible across every department in an organization. Your competition has already gone digital or is moving quickly in that direction, and you need to do this as well.
Process automation is essential in these areas:- Signature authentication
- Onboarding and maintaining employee records
- Secure storage with built-in redundancy for disaster recovery
- Flexible access to keep processes running smoothly
- Smart productivity tools to file, search and track documentation and promote collaboration
- Workflow automation that drives critical business processes
3. A hybrid (not remote) workforce empowered by cloud-based solutions
There is already a shift from a remote to a hybrid workforce, where employees work from both the office and from home. Due to this, using cloud technology is not optional anymore – it's a necessity. Companies are moving towards an “anywhere operations” model that allows them to produce and deliver products and services from anywhere in the world. Invest in a cloud solution to improve the productivity of your current workforce and to attract and retain top talent who expect to make use of the most current technology available. Moving to cloud-based software is a practical and straightforward way for your company to go digital to become future-ready. It eliminates the need to purchase new hardware or upgrade your software. In addition, the responsibility for maintaining security, ensuring data back up, and developing a technology infrastructure that can grow with your organization is shifted from your IT team to the cloud service provider.
4. Trust architecture and zero-trust security
Trust architecture is a set of strategies that increase protection against cyberattacks as companies move to the cloud and more employees work from outside of the office. And zero-trust security assumes someone or something is unsafe unless proven otherwise.
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According to McKinsey’s Top Trends in Tech, “Zero-trust security is an approach to preventing data breaches by eliminating the concept of trust from an organization’s network architecture and instead following the principle of ‘never trust, always verify.’” So, while you want to go digital, you still need to invest in a high-quality cloud platform that provides you with top-notch security so you and your employees can continue to work efficiently, and you can be confident that your documents and data are secure.With the huge growth of remote work and distributed workforces, you need to ensure your documents are protected, are only being accessed by the right people and are stored in compliance with federal, state and industry regulations. Put 360-degree data and document control protection in place when using cloud DM. Only allow staff to access the documents they need with custom user permissions. Externally, protect against cyberattacks and natural disasters with the highest standards of encryption and redundancy. A cloud solution also updates automatically with the latest features and security so it’s no drain on your IT resources.
What do these trends have in common, and how are they relevant to your company? Each of them involves a strategic approach to implementing and keeping pace with modern technology. These systems must prove themselves in terms of utility, cost-effectiveness, and broad capabilities that can be integrated with other business software. To find out how DocuWare Cloud aligns with these trends without sacrificing ease of use request a demo.
