Generating a data-driven view of document-based business processes
By Robert Palmer – Several managed print and document service (MPDS) providers are making the transition to document workflow services. Why? The reasons are simple and yet continue to go unrecognized by many channel partners. T
o begin with, document workflow represents a lucrative value-add service that can drive incremental new business, while increasing wallet share and profit per customer.
In addition, workflow services provide a high level of stickiness: once entrenched in your customer’s workflow you become a trusted partner and far more difficult for competitors to displace. The commonalities between service delivery and implementation are also important to note. If you already offer managed print services, you likely have developed a business model and service delivery infrastructure that maps well to document workflow services.
You are likely conducting assessments, and you understand how to take customers through a sales process tied to SLAs based on a manage-then-optimize approach.
While the potential benefits to your own business are quite compelling, it is the trends around digital transformation that provide the most compelling reasons for stepping into “workflow as a service”. Businesses of all sizes are struggling with the need to gain control over content and business-critical information.
The transition to mobile, cloudand the always-on digital ecosystem has changed the way we work, and many of these changes revolve around the basic need to manage and control access to information.
IDC research shows that SMB users spend 15% of their revenue on document-related technology, while large businesses spend up to 20%.
Further driving the need to convert workflows to digital is the growing demand by management to implement paper reduction initiatives. A recent study from IDC titled IDC MaturityScape: Digital Transformation of Document Workflowsstates that 70% of businesses with 100+ employees have deployed paper reduction initiatives with the goal of reducing 30–33% of their annual paper volume.
