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The Executive's Guide to Digitization in Business

The Executive's Guide to Digitization in Business

Guide

The Executive's Guide to Digitization in Business

Find out how digitization can help your business across a range of industries and applications.

 

The way the world does its work is changing for the better, and faster than ever before. Business digitization is a powerful force for improving efficiency across industries, though what those improvements look like may vary quite a bit for a construction company, an oil company, or an insurance company. If you’re wondering just what is digitization in business, here’s how a range of sectors are transforming for more profitable and future-proof operations.

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What business digitization means

Business digitization can help trim down response time, speed up processes, and create more efficient workspaces — whether at home or in the office. Digitizing business processes can range from doing meetings remotely, to onboarding new employees with materials via tablet, to converting paper documents into more easily accessible and shared digital files.

    Know your terminology

  • Digitization is the process of converting anything into a computer-friendly digital format.
  • Digitalization refers to processes that rework the presentation of data for a digital-first experience.
  • Digital transformation is a combination of the previous two to fully convert a business.

3 businesses that have profited from digitization in business

Thorndike Medical Centre

Thorndike Medical Centre made its high volume of daily access requests and medical report requisitions manageable with scanners that could digitize 60 pages per minute, electronically delivering HIPAA-compliant records in a fraction of the time previously required.

Arata Certified Tax and Accounting Services

Arata Certified Tax and Accounting Services went from spending 480 hours per month manually entering data from customer source documents to digitizing and automatically converting processed files. This decreased document turnaround to a single business day.

sports cards

Burbank Sportscards

Burbank Sportscards implemented automated fi Series scanning technology to streamline its processes. This meant scanning batches of cards in a fraction of the time it required before, allowing Burbank to conduct its online operations more efficiently.

 Read more about business digitization in What is Business Process Digitization? and 5 Profitable Examples of Digitization in Business.

 

Did You Know?: The fi-7600 has become a popular mid-office scanner thanks to its large, 300-page hopper and advanced engineering that help it digitize even the largest workloads right the first time.

Digitization of medical and health records

Electronic medical records systems are becoming increasingly common, but making them function well requires extensive digitization. When done by hand, this process typically entails substantial effort as well as riskier handling of sensitive patient records. Tools such as high-volume document scanners help eliminate those drawbacks.

    Benefits of digitizing medical records

  • Instant access to up-to-date info for providers.
  • Better documentation to streamline coding and billing.
  • Increased communication and access for better health outcomes.

Tools for effective medical record digitization

High-volume scanners

Medical offices that already have stacks of paper records to convert should opt for scanners that can work through larger loads, but even offices that have prioritized digital from the beginning can benefit from handy digitization tools.

Access to IT specialists

They aren’t just for massive business offices. Easy access to information is essential for improving outcomes, and keeping knowledgeable IT staff on hand is your first line of defense against downtime.

 Organization-wide digitization

Everyone from executives to ground-floor employees needs to be on board with digitization policies for them to work. Consider working digitization education into your regular HIPAA compliance training.

Read more about what digitization means for the medical field in How the Digitization of Medical & Health Records Enables Personalized Care at Scale.

Digitization of supply chain processes

Supply chains make the world work, and ensuring those supply chains operate both compliantly and effectively requires a lot of documentation. Centralized management tools and automation technology help bring greater efficiency to supply-side activities, reducing shortages, minimizing costs, and leading to more satisfied customers.

    Benefits of supply chain digitization

  • Real-time tracking brings greater visibility into shipments.
  • Optimized information storage makes it easier to monitor resources and identify bottlenecks.
  • Distributed data access makes collaboration between suppliers and stakeholders easy.

3 pillars of supply chain digitization

Integrated business processes

Integrated business processes enhance transparency of end-to-end chain operations and help partners coordinate efforts. This form of digitization of business enables more accurate projections for delivery times and other key concerns.

Digital tools

Digital tools such as supply chain management software, RFID and GPS tags, and document scanners increase the efficiency of day-to-day operations and free up time for employees to focus on more impactful tasks.

Data management

Data management makes multinational operations and other complicated proceedings possible, with effective supply chain management solutions helping to cut through mounting layers of complexity.

Read more about how digitization speeds supply chain processes in How Supply Chain Digitization Streamlines Corporate Operations.

Did You Know?:  ScanCare is the official premium preventive maintenance and repair program for fi Series Scanners, combining consumables, training, and on-site service options to maximize your uptime.

Digitization in the energy sector

Just like oil, data flows if you know where to look for it — and it must be refined to reach its full potential. The growing needs of consumers, as well as the rapid adoption of digitalization of energy systems themselves, means oil, gas, and petroleum companies should start rethinking the ways they do business if they haven’t already.

Areas of major impact for digitized data in the energy sector

seismic

Petroleum land surveying

The seismic survey process creates a massive amount of data that must be parsed before deposits can be located. Digitizing this data exponentially reduces the amount of work required to process it and find new stores of oil.

Petroleum pipelines

Smart pipelines can use built-in sensors to gather multiple forms of relevant data, locating potential areas of corrosion, pressure, or other problems before they exceed operating levels.

Oil pricing

Determining the costs of energy relies on numerous factors, including the difficulty of extracting the oil, inflation, political concerns, and more. Digitizing these data points allows companies to react swiftly and price accordingly.

Read more about the role of digitization in the energy sector in How Digitization in Oil, Gas & Petroleum Helps Keep Business Flowing.

Digitization in financial services

Financial service providers rely on vast quantities of data to conduct every part of their business, and effective digitization can have an outsized impact on the way these businesses meet the needs of partners. Yet downtime is unacceptable for such a key part of the modern world, making the right approach to digitization essential.

    Perks of financial service digitization

  • Faster loan applications and account creation.
  • Integration of practical paper documentation into digital workflows.
  • Greater scalability and flexibility.

Financial businesses benefiting from digitization

bank

Tradition Capital Bank

Tradition Capital Bank is a private bank that focuses on high-net-worth individuals, as well as their businesses and families, serving their needs with a full range of banking and cash management offerings. Despite its intentionally smaller scale, this personalized focus meant keeping scads of paperwork on hand — which can be both impractical and insecure. The fi Series scanners and software with built-in optical character recognition technology let Tradition Capital Bank digitize its documents to keep its focus on meeting each customer’s unique needs.

Mellott & Mellott

Mellott & Mellott is an accounting and financial planning business that emphasizes trust and tradition when working with its clients. Thousands of documents pass through Mellott & Mellott’s scanners on any given day during tax season, and the firm’s cloud migration in 2020 necessitated bringing new network-native scanners online. Mellott & Mellott introduced a set of five fi-7300NX document scanners to its office, with an installation process so smooth that the IT director says the hardest part was just laying the new network cabling.

Read more about why financial services should digitize in How Digitization in Financial Services Pays Dividends For Businesses.

Digitization in construction businesses

As the construction industry rebounds from pandemic-driven slowdowns, many businesses are eager to get right back to work. However, taking this opportunity to step back and re-evaluate processes will quickly reveal the benefits of digitization — not in replacing the boots-on-the-ground efforts of construction workers, but in keeping them doing what they do best.

    Benefits of construction business digitization

  • Making documentation available on-site, in offices, and at home.
  • Processing contracts and invoices quickly to reduce downtime.
  • Quickly updating property stakeholders on construction plans and potential changes.

Construction businesses benefiting from digitization

Shumate Mechanical

Shumate Mechanical is an HVAC installation and service company that has served the greater Atlanta area since 1978. Splitting off from its parent company meant Shumate needed to re-evaluate its internal data structure, whereupon it found friction points in the accounts payable process as well as a need to move documents across the organization more quickly. Integrating fi Series scanners into its workflow increased the efficiency of Shumate’s operations with faster invoice processing, as well honoring the company’s commitment to green solutions by decreasing paper use.

 Scofield Timber

Scofield Timber is a Georgia-based land-clearing and timber harvesting company that pursues techniques that don’t diminish the land’s natural value. Its process for each site includes extensive documentation: preliminary harvest plans, contracts and correspondence with land owners and project managers, and eventually load tickets from loggers to process their payment. Scofield initially brought in portable ScanSnap iX100 scanners to speed its accounts payable process, but they soon started speeding up operations all across the business — and even in the truck cabs of loggers on the job.
 
Read more about what digitization brings to construction companies in How Digitization Helps Construction Professionals Build Better Businesses.

Digitization in manufacturing businesses

Manufacturing businesses unify resources and data from disparate sources to create a single end product, which means late reports or misplaced contracts can have just as negative an impact on the bottom line as component shortages. While you can’t control what materials will be available and when, you can ensure that your data infrastructure won’t be the weak link.

    How digitization improves manufacturing efficiency

  • Reducing lack of transparency and siloed data.
  • Accelerated approvals processes for new designs.
  • Enabling internet of things (IoT) manufacturing tools such as 3D printers.

How digitization helped Pfizer meet vaccine manufacturing demand

Speeding up R&D

Speeding up R&D with data digitization allowed Pfizer to develop vaccine candidates and test their efficacy with speed that would’ve been impossible through analog processes. Speeding up R&D with data digitization allowed Pfizer to develop vaccine candidates and test their efficacy with speed that would’ve been impossible through analog processes.

Virtual monitoring of test subjects

Virtual monitoring of test subjects allowed researchers to accurately observe the effects of vaccines while minimizing the chances of external factors slowing down the testing process.

Faster results started saving lives 

Faster results started saving lives when the first Pfizer-developed doses of the COVID-19 vaccine arrived in the UK, only nine months after the letter of development was signed.

Read more about the ways digitization aids manufacturing in How Digitization in Manufacturing Drives Scalable Efficiencies.

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fi and SP Series scanners

Those in the market for tools to aid their business’ digital transformation have no shortage of options. We take great pride in having spent the last 50+ years researching, designing and developing some of the most advanced and powerful electronics in the world, including our professional grade fi and SP Series of scanners.

Built to purpose for the most demanding document handling jobs, fi and SP Series scanners are capable of processing tens-of-thousands of pages per day at the highest levels of accuracy. Their intuitive integration capabilities with all existing work suites minimize time-to-value for businesses looking to invest in tools that will pay dividends for years to come.

Digitizing your business is an effective means of ensuring its operational efficiency for years to come. The tools you use to achieve it should be just as future-proof. Our scanners are purpose-built for the digitization business, made to meet the high demands of a range of industries, and to keep delivering reliable and accurate results throughout the long life of each product. Click here to learn more or shop the rest of our production scanner line.