Choosing the right technology solution can be an intimidating task for those companies looking to commence their digital transformations.
In fact, the number one question we hear from clients is “Which solution do I need?”, often quickly followed by “How much does it cost?”
The answer to the first question varies greatly on the size of your organisation, industry, business type, and specific needs.
It isn’t something that can be solved by a ‘one-size fits all approach’ and it typically requires one our team to visit your business and document your processes so that we can properly understand how we can best help you.
The need for a Needs Assessment
Therefore, knowing what solution fits your business, requires a “needs assessment”. Put simply, a needs assessment does what it says on the tin, it identifies your company’s “needs” by finding gaps in results that can be filled via improvements in systems or processes.
Roger Kaufman, who is considered by many to be the father of needs assessment theory, said there were three levels of needs: mega (how your organisation relates or contributes to society), macro (how you relate to your external partners), and micro (your internal processes).
At Docuworx, we start by helping you optimise your micro needs, which in turn leads to improvements at the macro and the mega levels. After all, companies must fully optimise their internal processes if they want to have productive relationships with their partners and customers.
Below you will see a list of questions we might ask you in the course of accounting needs assessment:
- How long does it take you, on average, to process invoices?
- How much time is typically spent on data entry and filing paper invoice?
- Have you ever lost paper copies of invoices? What happened next?
- Are you required to match invoices, purchase request and proof of delivery documents before posting payments?
- Do you currently scan any of your invoices?
- Do you feel any of these processes take too long? Which ones?
We will also find out how many users you have and if an on-premise or cloud solution is preferred.
Once we have all the info we need, we will begin to tailor the ideal solution to you.
Mountains of data, but what to do with it?
Every organisation produces and collects data and so it isn’t surprising that the amount of data in the world is growing fast.
According to the global consulting firm IDC, there will be 175 zetabytes of data in the world by 2025.
Source: Data Age 2025, sponsored by Seagate with data from IDC Global DataSphere, Nov 2018
For perspective, a zetabyte is a trillion gigabytes! The point is, data isn’t going anywhere – it will only grow – and it is becoming increasingly obvious that the more data you have on your customer, the better. But you just don’t need data, you need that information to be structured, organized and easily accessible.
Take Amazon for example, which is now a trillion-dollar company. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos often says that the reason his company is so successful is because of its obsession with customer experience (CX).
Using the information generated by 200 million users and 1.5 billion items, Amazon can provide world-class CX that is seamless and personalised. Amazon is successful becuase it knows its customers and devices like Alexa help it understand them even better.
Climbing the mountain
You may be in a different industry, but your business, like any other, must harness the data it has to improve its operations.
As a platinum provider of Docuware, we have the solutions you need to start on your digital transformation journey.
With Docuware you can centralise valuable document and process knowledge in one system, integrating it directly with your enterprise resource planning (ERP) for a holistic view of your data.
To learn more about how we can help you reduce costs and optimise your business, contact us today.
