As technology has emerged, there have been several points around which the ways that businesses operate have pivoted. When the first large-scale ERP (enterprise resource planning) solutions began to hit the headlines of the technology & business press, most organisations of any size looked to these overarching, high-performance platforms to help them streamline and digitise their operations.

What transpired over the next ten years or so was the realisation that no single platform could oversee every aspect of every business— despite what the ERP vendors claimed.

Instead, companies from startups to large-scale enterprises discovered that the best way of moving their processes to a digital footing came from multiple products running in parallel. In tech circles, these platforms are known as “point products”, and are highly individualised and often act with minimum integration with other systems in the organisation.

That situation has led to data silos – places where valuable information resides, but data that’s often replicated elsewhere, usually in slightly different forms. Furthermore, most businesses never ultimately achieved the status of the fully “paperless office”, meaning that there are still significant silos consisting of hard copy in some business functions, too.

Digitally transforming any business is a complex task that usually comprises an overhaul of legacy structures and legacy systems into a series of automated workflows.

The reason why automation between silos creates quick wins is that significant resources are usually dedicated to manually moving data from silo to silo, point product to legacy platform, from paper invoice to digital accounts system, and so on. In many companies in Australia, there are significant numbers of staff who literally copy, paste and edit – work that is repetitive, and error-prone.

However, those looking to drive change across the business are looking to a household name in Australia and the wider APAC region, Fuji Xerox, as the catalyst for change. As a long-time innovator, and a company behind some of the very significant technological advances that have changed the world as we know it (like the computer mouse you may be holding right now, for instance), Fuji Xerox can help with a trio of insights:

• It brings the people you need; the professional and consultative services to reassess and support the business, its processes and the way the company operates. That’s a long-term commitment to seeing businesses transform digitally, make potential efficiency gains clear, and make the business function as a single unit once more – not a series of silos.
• It helps you create new processes, ones that come from decades of experience in multiple verticals in the region and across the world. Fuji Xerox’s technical solutions specialists and business analysts can point the way out of logjams caused by legacy structural issues and ensure that there are no processes that might endanger the business in terms of data security, regulations and information governance.
• It brings the technology, not just for technology’s sake, but any required systems designed to achieve business goals. With no specific “axe to grind”, Fuji Xerox’s extensive partner list can be drawn upon to implement the best, most suited and most effective solution(s), right where they’ll have the most impact.

The mistake that many organisations make is that they are still thinking along the lines of their predecessors that believed that a single ERP solution would achieve the desired result: in short, “shiny things make it all better.” The truth is that no single piece of software, however cutting-edge, can drive the types of changes that digital transformation requires.

Using solutions like digital document management and RPA (robotic process automation), companies can now work both more transparently (in the sense of every division/department capable of knowing what others are doing, in real-time), but also in a sustainable and scalable way. That means that as the company grows, its systems (digital and human) can not only cope, but thrive, without operational overheads making growth impractical.

From simple to complex deployments, integrations and multi-continental business unification, it’s Fuji Xerox that can help empower business processes and offer the long-term, premium support at every step of the way.

Reach out today to learn how this major industry player can aid your company or organisation plan, implement and continue digital transformation in 2020 and well beyond.