While it’s hard to ignore the movement towards the digital workplace, some SMBs have the misconception that a paperless office is only beneficial to larger companies. As a result, they are left dealing with an inefficient workplace that is still heavily reliant on paper. Not only can this be costly and produce a lot of waste, it also can hold a business back from reaching its fullest potential.
A recent IDC Technology Spotlight found that when organizations deploy services and solutions that digitally convert and integrate content within a workflow, users obtained significant benefits; the top two being time and cost savings.
Here are three ways that your SMB can benefit from automated workflows:
1. HR Onboarding
The HR onboarding process has historically been one that is very paper-intensive with a lot of moving parts. For small businesses, there is typically only one or two people responsible for the hiring and firing of employees, handling payroll, administering benefits, and ensuring that labor policies are being met. Without digital processes in place, HR onboarding can be a very slow process and a number of mistakes can happen along the way.
However, by automating workflows, important HR information goes into a secure, cloud-based storage system and can be retrieved with a simple mouse click. Some HR systems even offer an employee portal, which can alleviate your busy HR staff from constantly dealing with employee questions.
2. Accounts Payable
“69% of companies still print invoices.” – Photizo Group
Accounts payable is an area where automation can have a significant impact. By digitalizing workflow in accounts payable, challenges like time-consuming manual entry, dealing with different document formats from different vendors, searching and retrieving documents and lack of info sharing between different systems and departments are significantly reduced.
Automation systems like Canon’s Procure to Pay Automation solution will not only help your Accounts Payable department reduce time to process invoices, improve accuracy, make better use of time and reduce reliance on paper – it is easily scalable to meet your company’s current and future needs.
3. Mobility
More and more companies are allowing employees to work remotely. By creating a digital workplace, employees can still be highly productive regardless if they’re working from Starbucks or in the office. Using a secure, cloud-based platform to give employee access to company documents on-the-go can allow them to get the job done faster, which also means that your customers will be served faster, too.
Contact a UBS representative today to learn more about how digitization and workflow automation can help you to increase your efficiency and productivity in the workplace.
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