Document

Management Drives Innovation

The I n f o r m o l i o r Manogement Journal

Document Management Drives InnovationCompanies that focus on how doc-

uments and information are man-aged are better equipped to reducecosts, respond more quickly to chang-ing market conditions, and increaseprofits, according to a recent studyreleased by the Global ServicesDivision of Xerox Corp. and conduct-ed by research firm IDC.

Sixty-eight percent of the 550 U.S.executives interviewed for the surveysaid that effective document manage-ment initiatives are driving competi-tive innovation, profits, and revenue.The survey found that most business-es are overlooking an opportunity toimprove their business while thosethat do have an effective documentmanagement strategy in place arerealizing valuable revenue gains,competitive advantage, and improve-ments in overall efficiency withintheir organization.

Among the survey's other keyfindings;

• Almost two-thirds of surveyrespondents have initiatives inplace to reduce the total cost ofdocument management. On aver-age, they expect to achieve a 20percent reduction in costs.

• While knowledge workers spend20 percent of their day looking forinformation in documents, about50 percent of that time workerscannot find what they are lookingfor.

• Sixty-six percent agreed that effec-tive document managementdrives customer service.

' More than half of the informationthat companies share with theircustomers is in the form of paperdocuments. However, more than60 percent of respondents havenot successfully integrated hard-copy documents into their digitalworkflow.

Although paper still plays anessential role in business, the profit-growth leaders had far more digitizedwork processes (49 percent) than

their average profit-growth counter-parts (30 percent).

Barriers to effective informationuse include inconsistent content orfile formats (27 percent), search/retrieval challenges (22 percent), andincreasing regulatory restrictions (17percent).

Respondents corroborate theimportance of addressing both struc-tured (e.g., forms, invoices) informa-tion and unstructured (e.g., e-mail.Word, Web documents) informationin a document management strategy.

About 40 percent of the organiza-tions indicate that the role of both ITmanagers and chief informtaJon offi-cerss is important in driving docu-ment process changes within anorganization.

The survey results are detailed in awhite paper from IDC, "OrganizationsShift Focus to Information Manage-ment: The Role of Documents in HighlyEffective Business Processes." To accessit, visit www.xerox.com/globalservices

and click "White Papers."

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