How Digital Document Management Aligns With an Agile Workplace

by: Scott Swidersky

As companies seek to gain efficiencies in the workplace, provide flexibility for employees, encourage collaboration, and attract and retain the best talent, strategies involving Agile working have gained popularity. Agile working involves developing an organization, its culture and processes. It is no longer about doing things the old way with some new technologies and redesigned offices. Rather, it is about creating new ways of working using new tools, new processes, and new approaches to manage and collaborate.

Agile working aims to create attractive and high-quality work environments that support modern work styles and increase the adaptability of space. For this reason, the principles of Agile development closely match the underlying philosophy of the digital workplace. In order for employers and employees to experience the benefits of an Agile working environment, technology in the workplace must be able to adapt and accommodate the requirements needed.

Digital document management significantly reduces paper usage, often a major factor when moving to an Agile work environment with less physical space. Let’s dive into an example of one Agile office in action.

A global leader in the production of food-crafting goods made the decision to move its corporate headquarters from a campus of office buildings to one large facility. While the new, centralized office location would facilitate easier collaboration between teams and departments, the new office layout lacked the open storage space required for paper-based document management. Therefore, the company decided to convert its files to electronic documents and initiate a full transition to a digitized filing system for ease of use and efficient workflow in the future.

Our team at Konica Minolta collaborated with the organization’s internal IT staff and other involved departments to familiarize themselves with project needs and business processes to complete the project efficiently. We scanned over 900,000 documents with 100-percent accuracy and completed the conversion project in time for the company’s move.

With its volume of paper files scanned and converted to digital format, the company has begun its transition to a completely digital company. Our preparation of the company’s digital files for use in an enterprise content management (ECM) solution streamlined the transition from paper to digital, increasing operational efficiency and transforming business processes.

According to research from the Project Management Institute, Agile organizations finished projects on time 65 percent of the time, versus 40 percent for non-Agile companies. They also completed 75 percent of their goals, versus 56 percent for non-agile and even grew their revenue 37 percent faster. You can’t argue with the numbers!

@konicaminoltaus