Control Information Chaos with a Digital Mailroom
Information chaos may be getting the upper hand. That’s one conclusion from a report by the Association for Intelligent Information Management.1
Researchers found that the average organization scores its efforts to control information chaos at 1.64 out of 4. That’s a middling C- grade that doesn’t inspire much confidence.
While organizations surveyed by AIIM feel good about their progress, 25 percent say that digitizing, automating, and integrating processes is a challenge, and 24 percent say it’s hard to manage information throughout its entire lifecycle.
Incredibly, the percentage of organizations struggling to digitize, automate and integrate processes and manage information hasn’t changed much since the mid-2000s, AIIM notes.
But today’s mailrooms face daunting challenges:
- Exploding volumes of data and documents
- Multiple information delivery channels
- New content formats
- Growing volumes of unstructured and semi-structured data
- Heightened demand to accelerate the delivery of data downstream
- Ever-increasing regulatory compliance demands
Without the right processes in place, staff can miss key information and generate inaccurate or poorly organized data. This leads to fragmented systems that obscure visibility and prevent stakeholders from making well-informed decisions.
Remote work is further complicating information management. Most mailrooms require in-office staff to receive and route documents and data, which puts a heavier burden on the mailroom to digitize documents to enable remote access.
If your mailroom can’t find a better way, you’re putting your organization at a competitive disadvantage. At a time when margins are already shrinking, information chaos contributes to higher costs, lower levels of productivity, less agility, and a weaker customer experience.
What Happened to the Promise of a Digital Mailroom?
Why are information management initiatives falling short? It’s how mailrooms capture and manage data.
Organizations surveyed by AIIM rank intelligent capture, machine learning, and robotic process automation (RPA)—linchpins of an intelligent enterprise—as the least mature of their information management efforts.
And to no one’s surprise, 46% of organizations think their business/technology alignment needs work.
Technology is not holding businesses back. The case for intelligent capture, machine learning, and RPA is proven and compelling. But few deploy this technology effectively.
Antiquated on-premises capture solutions weren’t built to handle the challenges faced by today’s mailrooms.
Traditional capture solutions require complicated implementations and have a hard time adapting to changing business requirements. And piecing together disparate solutions only creates more complexity, creates security risks, and inflates capture costs. Pricey, fixed contracts trap businesses and add incremental costs to integrate additional features and capabilities.
Build an Intelligent Mailroom
It’s time to rethink your approach.
AIIM predicts the volume of information organizations receive will grow 4.5 times over the next two years. The daunting part? More than 57% will be unstructured or semi-structured.
That kind of volume will overwhelm a mailroom that doesn’t have the right technology. That’s why now’s the time to invest in a digital mailroom.
Digital mailrooms manage paper and electronic documents and data on a single platform. This streamlines capture, extraction, and validation based on pre-defined business rules. It also speeds accurate content to downstream systems.
On-premises capture solutions aren’t up to the task. It will take a new breed of cloud-native capture technology to make the digital mailroom a reality. Cloud capture solutions aggregate, extract, validate and process data from any document, delivered through multiple channels. With unlimited volumes, you can easily set up users and bots and scale as needed.
You can also integrate these solutions with your legacy systems and mission-critical applications, such as ERP and CRM platforms. Automatic software updates ensure maximum data protection, and usage-based software and subscription pricing help you control costs.
These capabilities put your mailroom in control of its content. With these challenges bearing down, it’s time to choose between falling behind the competition and modernizing your information management.
It’s an easy choice.
See how ibml can help today. Speak to an expert about how a digital mailroom might benefit your business.
1. AIIM. 2021 State of the Intelligent Information Management Industry: A Wake-Up Call for Organization Leaders. https://info.aiim.org/state-of-the-intelligent-information-management-industry-2021