When a business starts out, saving a few minutes each day doesn’t make a great deal of difference to the bottom line. After all, with just a handful of people in the organisation, and with every employee essentially turning their hand to whatever is required, saving a few minutes on each process probably doesn’t appear to make much impact.

But in any business, saving time, especially for repetitive tasks, means those savings add up. If a team of ten Sales staff each save an hour each day, then suddenly, gains in efficiency can be significant. And these gains can come from something as simple as, for instance, creating, editing, and sharing common business documents.

These documents are the lifeblood of a business. It’s surprising, therefore, that most companies of any size still approach the documents they use everywhere as if the year on the wall calendar were 1993. Static Word and Excel documents fly from author to editor, are sent off for approval, then are amended, resent, and finally reproduced in another system, like the company ERP.

Now imagine if every business process involving documents and contracts, right across the enterprise, could be streamlined, automated, made more efficient and also, made safer and data-compliant. Because by deploying relatively simple, yet smart technologies to manage documents and related processes, that’s just what can be done.

Example: A sales proposal might start a piece of work moving through the business. Done the old way, the process might look like this: perhaps a Sales rep grabs a Word document she has used before. It gets renamed, then details of the new customer are copied and pasted from Salesforce data.

Next, product specs are pulled from the company’s Box archives to complete the proposal. The finished document is then emailed to the line manager, who makes several amendments, renaming the document, and sending it back. The rep makes amends, renames the document (again), sends it for approval, and copies in the operations or manufacturing team.

However, the customer calls back and wants to make a slight tweak to their order. And, the process begins again. Once the contract is ready for signature, the Sales rep has to scan it and email it to get it signed. The customer prints it out, signs it with ink, scans it, and emails it back.

Source: Conga

The inefficiencies, disorganisation and errors this process can produce are evident. Many are removing these problems from their organisation by deploying Conga’s Digital Document Transformation Suite of solutions.

With Conga Grid, the Sales rep can keep her sales data and task queue in Salesforce easily up to date. Conga Composer and Conga Collaborate automate document creation and management based on templates that draw on clean Salesforce data—no more cutting and pasting. If the proposal results in a contract, Conga’s intelligent contracts solutions enable the Sales rep (or legal team) to negotiate, approve, store the agreement, and track all key terms. And it’s easy to secure a binding eSignature with Conga Sign.

With this suite of solutions, companies can save time, drastically reduce errors, and get better transparency and insights into their business.

Customer story: Digital Dolphin

For the imaging supplier, Digital Dolphin, the above scenario was a reality. With a team of 50 reps, each of whom cut order processing times in half using Conga Composer, the bottom line soon sat up and took notice!

Conga Composer automatically collated all the required information: contact details, account details, product information, and accurate pricing, into one order form.

The results were one hour saved, per rep, per day. Order processing time was slashed in half by automating the type of daily administration tasks that sales teams everywhere loathe — in this case, pushing data updates into Salesforce.

Simple mistakes?

What managers often forget is that employees tasked with repetitive, manual work tend to make more mistakes than normal. A single error in renaming a document, or pasting information into an Excel document in the wrong format, can “break” calculations, introduce large margins of error, and generally cause problems down the line.

But by managing the digital lifeblood of any organisation, its documents and data, and automating its flow, companies gain:

– A more engaged workforce.

– Greater efficiency.

– Fewer errors.

– Fewer digital compliance or cybersecurity issues.

– A healthier bottom line.

Conclusion: Creating real outcomes through Digital Transformation of documents

To circle back to our initial earlier point, it’s surprising that the way that many of us still work with methods that are so old-fashioned. And that’s because most organisations have yet to realise the immediate efficiency gains that the application of 2020 technology will produce in 1990s workflows.

When it comes to updating critical business processes involving documents, Australia has made some great strides, and Australian organisations recognise the importance of implementing change. In a landmark survey report titled “The State of Digital Document Transformation: Australia“, Conga has taken the measure of where Digital Transformation stands, what the challenges and benefits are, and how companies are faring on the road to Digital Transformation.

The survey report stated that 97 per cent of Australian organisations have a Digital Transformation strategy, but only 51 per cent of all initiatives are successful. Even with that limited success, 97.7 per cent of Australian survey respondents have seen at least one significant benefit from Digital Transformation.

Transforming and automating everyday business documents is an effective method for achieving the benefits of Digital Transformation. In fact, 88 per cent of those who responded to the survey agreed that documents are the key to successful Digital Transformation.

And it’s worth it. Organisations with successful Digital Transformation strategies are seeing real business outcomes, including increases in profit, revenue, and growth.

To learn more about managing your Digital Transformation in ways that make sense in this interconnected, cloud-based world, we suggest you take on board the information found in the survey report from Conga, “The State of Digital Document Transformation: Australia“.

Then, when you’re ready for employees to start working quicker, more accurately, and with significantly fewer mistakes, speak to a representative from the company today.