Valuable business insight existed long before the big data boom, so it is essential to look beyond digital information.
So says David Mills, COO of Ricoh Europe, who adds: "There is one real outcome that matters. That's collecting, analysing and acting on the high-quality information available, and using it to provide a better service to clients, winning their loyalty and continued custom."
Research commissioned by the printing, office automation and imaging company illustrates the benefits of tackling the "bigger data" opportunity - the digitisation of business-critical, hard-copy documents for business decision-making.
Conducted by Coleman-Parkes, the research showed that significant business value lies locked away in paper documents, with 88% of surveyed respondents agreeing that digitising and unlocking data from physical documents would improve business decision-making. Furthermore, 70% of business leaders believe that digitising hard-copy documents would save between 5% and 20% of their annual turnover, with half of these respondents able to achieve a 5% to 10% return and the other half between 11% and 20%.
Mills believes business leaders still foresee volumes of hard-copy information growing in the workplace.
"While the initial focus of big data initiatives has been on digital data sources, there is growing recognition from business leaders that there is significant value lying dormant in physical information assets. Seventy-six percent said they could have learnt from the previous recession and reduced the impact of the current one if they had better access to historical information," he explains.
The research also reveals that over 50% of organisations still have up to 10 years' worth of information stored only in hard-copy format. Some 63% of the leaders agree that it takes too long to find the information they need from hard-copy files. Mining data that is fragmented across filing cabinets, warehouses, basements and files held by employees often comes at a significant price.
"It is clear that we are now in the era of bigger data, and our ability to easily access information, whether digital or physical, is essential as organisations accelerate their digital transformation and drive business growth," he adds.
The digitisation of hard-copy documents is now becoming a business priority for organisations, with six out of 10 respondents expecting to have completely digitised these assets within the next three years, notes Mills.
"The economic crisis has underlined the importance to the organisation of gaining a 360-degree view into the environment around them, both in the past and present. It's therefore vital that businesses harvest all of their critical information to gain competitive edge, and enhance business decision-making in the future," he concludes.
Share