CIOopinion
centre – focused rather than enterprisewise.
CIOs are in the position to reverse
this thinking and take a view of resilience
that is location-agnostic.
We know that flexibility in relation
to home working or different service
locations is vital. Many organisations
have already taken steps to rid
themselves of large, central offices but
this has obvious implications for secure
and compliant access and processing of
documents. Digitising documents in a
secure, compliant manner enables agile
movement of processes between service
centres and home environments.
In light of this, upgrading long
forgotten mail rooms into document
processing hubs that act as enablers
of electronic and physical document
distribution is seen as vital to
establishing operational resilience;
92% of organisations are looking
to increase automation while 80%
are looking to digitise mail rooms,
with over 70% seeking to digitalise
document processes.
John Willmot, CEO of NelsonHall, said:
“The recent crisis has extensively exposed
the limitations of existing centre-focused
Business Continuity planning. To increase
their future operational resilience,
enterprises now need their BCP plans to
be location-independent and to support
widespread work-from-home. This
necessitates increasing the digitalisation
of document processing and distribution
and enhancing the ability to move agent
knowledge between sites and personnel.”
3. Seek high-impact automation
IDC’s President, Crawford Del Prete,
recently argued that with businesses
having dealt with the initial shock of
lockdown, they are now focused on
business resilience. He says that to
succeed in this next phase, businesses
must look to Digital Transformation
initiatives with the steps they take not
just protecting them now, but ensuring
they are ready for a post-recession
growth phase. Organisations that reach
that growth phase will have used this
time to extend Digital Transformation
initiatives focused on agility.
And Digital Transformation is becoming
increasingly linked to operational resilience.
For example, manual processing of physical
documents clearly has a very low level of
operational resilience, whereas automated
and electronic document processing enjoys
higher levels of operational resilience.
Increasing automation has a direct impact
on the resilience of key service areas
such as customer care. In fact, 92% of
organisations plan to increase automation
of processes following this crisis.
The next year will undoubtedly prove to
be an uphill battle to counter the effects
of the current crisis and associated
recession. However, this has also afforded
the opportunity for CIOs to focus efforts
on building operational resilience that will
not only see them through future crises
but will ensure a foundation for first-rate
transformation to deliver growth.
Beyond outbreaks of disease, other
global issues we are facing might be
more pressing than we think; climate
change, extreme weather – not to mention
the borderless and ever-present risk of
cyberattacks. Now more than ever, there
is an increasing need for enterprise-wide
transformation programmes that focus on
getting the basics of operational resilience
right – starting with location agnostic, agile
access to data and documents. •
48 INTELLIGENTCIO www.intelligentcio.com