Industry news

Optimising business-critical document processes can play a major role in improving overall business performance, helping to increase profitability and enabling an organisation to respond more quickly to customer needs.

Yet still more than half of those in the legal sector, increasing to 64 per cent in Financial Services[1] admit that they could increase the efficiency of their existing processes, according to recent research by Coleman Parkes. Furthermore, over one quarter of all business critical documents are still being processed in hard copy in both legal and financial services. Inevitably, this leaves them more susceptible to errors, processes are unnecessarily labour intensive and the efficiency of client service levels is impacted. So, isn’t it time to outsource?

The outsourcing market is continuing to steadily rise across the globe. A recent EMEA TPI Index showed that in the UK and Ireland market alone, the complete revenue for 2011 is expected to surpass last year’s total by over 10 per cent with Europe, the Middle East and Africa set to increase its third quarter, year on year total by 99 per cent[2]. More and more organisations are realising how outsourcing complex processes will have a positive impact on business productivity, enhancing information flow and freeing up staff to focus on areas of the business that create more value.

Also, the Coleman Parkes research also revealed that over one third (36 per cent) of UK business leaders stated that they would, or already have outsourced their business critical document processes to improve efficiencies.

So what is holding the other businesses back? According to the survey, 61 per cent of those who aren’t considering outsourcing cite security concerns and 34 per cent said they do not want to lose control of their processes.

It is clear that further education and awareness are needed to help businesses determine the most efficient routes to process optimisation. Security concerns can be easily overcome by implementing software that will protect, track and audit how valuable information flows across the organisation. Also, organisations and outsourcers need to work together to overcome such concerns by establishing a partnership approach, instead of simply focusing on one-off efficiency gains.

A business document outsourcing company should have an in-depth understanding of how they can optimise business critical processes and how they fit within their client’s wider business activity. Also key is to understand the way their employees work, and the IT service requirements of the organisation. This approach needs to be matched with an internal collaborative effort between the CIO, CFO and COO in the boardroom.

By embracing outsourcing and working with a partner they trust, companies really can transform their business. They can also reduce any unnecessary overheads created as a result of outdated document processes, improve information flow and ultimately drive savings across the entire organisation.

Old habits die hard, so don’t fight them. Instead give your staff collaboration tools they will actually use

Back in the 60s the only technology on an employee’s desk, if they were lucky enough to have any at all, was a telephone. Things have changed dramatically since then, and today we are surrounded by an array of technology that we use for work – from PCs, mobile phones, laptops and tablets to a hodgepodge of collaboration and social tools – all designed to make us productive in the office and, now also, on-the-go.

Given such a rich tapestry of tools, why does Forrester Research report across-the-board underutilization of collaboration and social tools, with 64% of surveyed businesses receiving few benefits, if any, from their investments?

The technology adoption gap

Human nature is arguably the main factor that inhibits the adoption of new technology – people don’t like change. The reality is, when presented with an alternative way of doing something, we tend to overvalue the way we already do it while undervaluing the new option. Harvard Business School marketing professor, John Gourville, sums it up as 'People irrationally overvalue benefits they currently possess relative to those that they don't'. In fact, according to Gourville's 'what you have' theory, a new product, service or process has to be nine times better than what a user is already using, or is doing, if it is to motivate them enough to change their behaviour or adopt a new product or technology.

Why nine times? Well, his premise is that the people peddling change will overvalue their fantastic new offering by a factor of three. In parallel, users tend to undervalue the benefits of the proposed change by a factor of three.

A second key factor impacting technology adoption is our reliance on an abundance of digital devices and stand-alone applications to get work done. Office workers switch programs some 37 times an hour, according to research reported by the New York Times. Dealing with too much information, and Alt-tabbing between too many potentially useful-but disjointed tools, is a constant mental locomotion that robs us of our ability to focus, think creatively, and generally take care of the responsibilities we were hired for. And that costs money.

So when change is called for, it is critically important to recognize common pitfalls and take steps to make sure the right technology solution gets implemented, with as little friction as possible. Here are some questions to consider:

• Is all that glitters gold? People are all too often lured into thinking they need something entirely new to solve a problem. Rather than first looking at what they have and why it isn’t being utilized, they make significant investments in a host of new technologies, creating yet another information silo for users to disregard. Jive is a perfect example. It seems it can do almost anything, with its robust feature set and top notch analytics capabilities, but social business leader Jacob Morgan questions if this is really what organizations need or want. He explains, “Many companies are just trying to hang picture frames and Jive is trying to offer the ability to tear down walls.” In his blog, Morgan postulates that perhaps 20-50% of Jive’s features are actually adopted.

• How do people do the task today? Dazzled by what the latest, greatest product or service promises it can do, many organizations neglect to think about how people would need to radically change their work habits to realise these gains. For example, an age old problem is the document development process. Business users invariably ping-pong multiple document versions back and forth, wasting time wrestling with the resultant document chaos and creating compliancy risks down the road. Web 2.0 pundits argue wikis activity streams and real time status updates will replace the “archaic” document concept. But the reality is, today, business people are creating and sharing more contracts, resumes, presentations and financial analyses than ever before. So documents won’t suddenly disappear, but they do need to become more social to be relevant in an Enterprise 2.0 world.

• Is resistance futile? Faced with the shock of new and/or unknown technologies, most people will dig in their heels rather than change. Email is an excellent case in point. If I had a dime for every eulogy written for email in the last few years, I wouldn't be writing this article, I would be sailing on my yacht in the Bahamas. But email isn't going anywhere soon. Rather, like documents, email will evolve.

So, how do you get users to change? Here are three things to consider that are often overlooked.

Technology

Consider how new products, or even changes to current solutions, will be used and fit within your existing parameters.

Currently, according to Forrester Research, only 20% of business workers use team document sharing sites such as Microsoft SharePoint daily. These user adoption gaps stem largely from the complex multi-step navigation required when completing tasks, not on inherent deficiencies in the product itself. Therefore, look at how incumbent products and existing working practices can be matched. For example, simplifying SharePoint tasks by bringing them into the place where people work, like email, is one way to take SharePoint and make it useful to every business user. Several products provide this type of functionality.

Training

Forrester Research estimates that, for every $1 invested in purchasing collaboration software, $6-7 will need to be spent on training and getting people to use it. Rather than try to streamline training, how about figuring out ways to obviate the need for training? The closer the solution matches the current workflow, the less training will be needed. In fact, enterprises that integrate SharePoint collaboration and social features within their email client have realized dramatic improvements in the way their workforce operates, without drastically changing what they are already doing, because their workforce adopts SharePoint en masse for collaboration.

Plan for ‘Larry in the Mailroom’

It’s important, when implementing change, that everyone in the business is considered. As it’s impractical to consult every member of the workforce, a cross section that ensures everyone in the business is represented should be consulted so that the business needs are clearly defined in real scenarios and the implications of introducing new processes and/or technology can be fully explored. User reactions will help determine how to progress, changes made, and training offered before universal implementation is conducted.

This process doesn’t just influence users to embrace change but can also have a knock on effect to other areas of the business. So when Larry, our mailroom clerk, hears about sales achieving double digit revenue growth by establishing global peer-to-peer knowledge sharing, he helps streamline deliveries by instigating a worldwide learning community. Aka social business in action.

Ultimately, technology is only worthwhile if it is embraced so plan for change even before you sign on the dotted line.

FCC, one of the world's top services, infrastructures and renewable energy companies, has signed a 50 million Euros agreement with BT, one of the world’s leading providers of communications services and solutions, for the delivery of global data network and fixed communications services for a period of five years.

This agreement covers more than 50 countries in four continents - from Egypt to France, from the UAE to Russia, from Peru to Singapore and the United States. It includes wide and local area networking services, fixed voice services, video conferencing and remote access for more than 12,000 users located in approximately 850 sites.

The Government has published its new Cyber Security Strategy, setting out how the UK will support economic prosperity, protect national security and safeguard the public’s way of life by building a more trusted and resilient digital environment. It heralds a new era of unprecedented cooperation between the Government and the private sector on cyber security, working hand in hand to make the UK one of the most secure places in the world to do business.

The Government has already ranked cyber security as a tier 1 national security priority and committed £650m over the next four years to bolster its cyber defences. The UK is also leading the way on the world stage, earlier this month hosting the London Conference on Cyberspace to drive forward international dialogue on building a secure digital world.

Prime Minister David Cameron said: “While the internet is undoubtedly a force for social and political good, as well as crucial to the growth of our economy, we need to protect against the threats to our security. This strategy not only deals with the threat from terrorists to our national security, but also with the criminals who threaten our prosperity as well as blight the lives of many ordinary people through cyber crime."

The European Parliament’s Civil Liberties Committee has approved a report written by Labour MEP Michael Cashman which seeks to open EU institutions to public scrutiny and extend the rights of European citizens to access EU documents.

The committee backed Cashman’s amendments to draft public access legislation by 33 votes to 17. The changes seek to improve transparency, accountability and democracy within EU institutions and they will now be considered at next month’s Strasbourg Plenary, when the Parliament will vote on the proposed legislation.

Michael, who has spent the last ten years fighting to open up EU institutions, said: “What we are talking about is a right that allows citizens to make sure that we are accountable; parliamentarians accountable for what we do in their name, the Commission for what it does in their name, and, equally, the Council of Ministers."

University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (UCLH) has announced plans to save more than £1.2 million on its office printing costs by using Xerox managed print services.

The seven-year Enterprise Print Services agreement will enable the Trust to take control of its printing processes and costs, and forms part of a wider project by Logica to create an intelligent back-office infrastructure for the Trust.

UK contact centre industry expects close to doubling of speech analytics usage by the end of 2012.

New research published by ContactBabel, the contact centre industry analysts, reveals that UK businesses expect the use of speech analytics solutions to jump from a current penetration rate of 14% to 26% within 12 months.

Although 57% of respondents - the majority of these in sub-100 seat contact centres - do not have any plans to implement speech analytics, the installed base industry-wide is expected by contact centre managers and directors to be close to doubling within 12 months.

Microsoft Corp, the largest software company, has signed an agreement that lets it take a closer look at Yahoo! Inc.’s financial information to help it consider financing a bid.

Yahoo’s advisers asked that bids be submitted next week. Bidders are likely to offer to buy only a minority stake in Yahoo, as they haven’t arranged financing for a full takeover. It is possible Microsoft may help finance a bid and not try to buy Yahoo outright, two people said.

The South African government is considering reforming public procurement procedures, including simplifying purchasing laws.

Proposals developed by the National Planning Commission said public procurement laws have become increasingly complicated over the past decade.

The National Development Plan: Vision for 2030 states “When even honest and competent bureaucrats find it difficult to understand what their legal obligations are and how to comply with them, the law requires simplificatio."

Multi-national process technology firm standardises and streamlines IT with Agilisys Cloud Services

Multi-national process technology company PDX, has awarded Agilisys Cloud Services a three-year contract to provide a fully managed IaaS (infrastructure-as-a-service) worth approximately £1 million. The service will standardise and streamline PDX’s IT infrastructure in an end-to-end managed service covering: hosting, storage, provision of Microsoft technologies, backup and desktop support.

PDX provides technologies that enable companies in a wide range of markets to make their industrial processes more efficient by optimising processing cycles and reducing the use of resources and energy. For PDX’s ambitious growth plans it sought a cloud services partner to simplify IT systems management, increase visibility and control of IT processes, and ensure that all data is backed up, secure and fully auditable. Additionally, PDX wanted to improve incident reporting and how IT support calls are raised, tracked and handled.

Jarek Gorecki Head of IT, PDX, commented on the agreement: “We had reached a point where we either invested in additional infrastructure and grew our in-house technical team or found a provider to supply an end-to-end managed cloud service. We wanted to benefit from increased reliability and availability of scalable IT Infrastructure, and decided to make a major step-change in our IT provision by moving to the cloud. Our partnership with Agilisys Cloud Services will standardise our systems and infrastructure and transform the way IT is supported, managed and deployed. We see our IT infrastructure moving to a reliable, scalable and robust platform going forward.”