As the hardcopy industry shifts its focus from hardware to business document workflow automation and optimisation, a recent International Data Corporation (IDC) user survey has identified important trends that can help providers sharpen their solutions development focus and go-to-market investments.
The research shows clear patterns in which business processes are being automated and digitised and how these patterns vary by vertical industry, company size, and how advanced the managed print services (MPS) contract is (that is, managed print and document services, or MPDS, versus basic print services, or BPS).
Key findings from the survey include the following:
* The top business processes being automated and digitized over both the past 12 months and the next 12 months are heavily back-office oriented, but also include front-office sales and marketing/customer communications.
The latter two areas are hardly targeted by hardcopy vendors/partners and represent significant missed opportunities, according to Angele Boyd group vice-president and GM of IDC’s Document Solutions, Imaging/Printing & SMB research practices. One or both areas are opportunities in Retail, Services, Manufacturing, Financial Services, Healthcare, and small and mid-size firms.
* Automating certain back-office business processes is far more common in some verticals. For example, regulatory/compliance processes are tier 1 or 2 priorities for Financial Services, Healthcare, Government, and large enterprises (1000+ employees). Legal processes are tier 1 or 2 priorities for Healthcare, Retail, Education, Financial Services, Services, and large enterprises (1000+ employees).
* MPS is far more correlated with automating/optimising many business document processes than not having it. But, within MPS, advanced MPS is more associated with vertical-specific processes and basic MPS is more associated with horizontal ones.
* A print volume reduction initiative is correlated with automating/optimizing most of the 13 business processes. Exceptions suggest that those processes are being automated/optimised for other reasons, or that the companies automating/digitizing them are less concerned with reducing print.
