Are We There Yet? Moving Towards a Digital Destiny.
Blog: Kofax - Smart Process automation
Where are we in terms of the digitalization “tipping point”? The answer lies partly in the industry and specific process areas you’re interested in.
For the purposes of this post, the term digitalization refers to the process that was designed and can be executed entirely using digital components – no compromises, transformations or bridges involved, e.g. paper documents aren’t converted to fit. In contrast, digitization projects involve some conversion from conventional processes and may involve conversion or transformation components. Examples of digitization include scanning and OCR reading of paper documents, the extraction and verification of structured data-sets from unstructured emails and attachments and the interpretation of voice commands using voice to data technologies.
Here are 3 industry examples:
1. Insurance – There appears to be significant soul searching around the level of digitalization within insurance but I would say that at as an industry, Insurance and General Insurance in particular, is already largely digitalized. For example, the majority of insurers no longer send paper versions of schedules and policy information; many larger players default to making these available online. Initial engagement with these organisations is increasingly web based meaning that the process is digital from end-to-end. Paper still proliferates in various types of medical and health insurance as well as in commercial insurance where, due partly to product distribution and service layers, paper seems to proliferate as a common denominator. Similarly, when significant motor claims are challenged, escalated and where personal injury is involved, the number of paper document tends to increase exponentially. Despite the UK Ministry of Justice (MOJ) Portal, this increase in documentary evidence is driven by compliance, data protection issues and precedent. However, times are changing and paper is slowly but steadily being replaced by electronic data exchange mechanisms. Claims processes appear to lag behind more mainstream markets (ironic for what is essentially a customer facing activity) and as a result paper continues to play an all-too-important role in claims processing.
2. Legal Services / Law – There are a few exceptions, but the legal industry still relies heavily on paper as its primary information exchange mechanism. The rationale is entirely reasonable and predictable; compliance, legal admissibility, data protection and established protocols are slow to change, especially in full service firms. However, larger or more specialized firms as well as those engaged in fixed fee cases have taken the digitalization message on board. Similarly, as firms merge and consolidate to address the margin and efficiency challenges of the 21st century legal market, we’re seeing increased digitization and some good movement towards full-scale digitalization, too. Feedback from the industry reports many case management solutions that have served the legal industry well for the past decade fall short of the needs of the modern law firms where customer engagement, process intelligence and comprehensive automation are considered critical.
3. Retail is probably the one industry that leads the way in digitalization. Whereas Amazon.com famously established itself as a 100% digital business from its inception, many brick and mortar retailers attempt to maintain mirror images of themselves in cyberspace. Mirror images is what they’d like to believe they represent. In reality, their cyberspace personas are akin to an alter ego. Needless to say, challenges exist for these companies operating under hybrid models; frequent anecdotes along the lines of “same company but two very different experiences” where traditional and e-commerce sides of the business are out of alignment.
To engage in the digitalization and digitization wave, solutions must embrace both current and future systems of engagement and enable your organization to extract more value from your systems of record. Reducing reliance on human intervention is also a critical factor to avoid erosion of knowledge worker value and to scale processes. Only then will it be possible for you to deliver significant improvements in customer service.
Ready to learn more? Click here to download Simplifying Claims Processing white paper to get insights to build your case for digitization.
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