Digitized processes to go
Established workflows are no longer efficient and no longer function consistently
Remote work, home office, workation and other work models are catching on. A pandemic opportunity or just a short-lived trend? The home office rate has risen from five to more than 50 percent in just a few months. The decision about where to work is shifting from the employer to the employee. By 2024, 32 percent of all employees worldwide will work remotely, according to Gartner. So companies face myriad challenges as they transition to this hybrid landscape.
A central element in any digitization strategy is the Digital Workplace. It is at the heart of every digitization strategy. The modern workplace succeeds in enabling collaboration within and between teams despite physical distance. Documents that were once physically stored in files and folders are now stored digitally. This makes work much more flexible and every employee has access to any information they need. All data is in one central location and can therefore be accessed quickly and easily. With regard to the various forms of the digital workplace, I believe that two approaches need to be emphasized in particular.
On the one hand, people must not be disregarded alongside the diversity of software and technology. Without them, technology would not work. And solutions must be geared precisely to their needs. Technology is a means to an end in order to promote personal productivity and to optimally support people in their work. And it's not just company management that needs to recognize this, but also the employees themselves. The fear of rethinking processes must be set aside in order to recognize and exploit the potential.
On the other hand, process optimization and increased efficiency are important goals of any digitization strategy. For these, the company needs clear guidelines and strategies. How should documents be filed and organized, for example? How must processes be mapped uniformly via workflows? Answers to such questions (and many more) must be found within the company so that the central goals can be met.
With SAP and ECM
With S/4, customers are supported in redesigning their business processes. Tools and services for a technical migration are provided in order to use platforms and solutions for the digital transformation with the Business Technology Platform, BTP, and S/4 Cloud. Often, the migration to S/4 Hana is seen more on a technical level, with SAP offering more than is assumed by companies. But even with an S/4 system, there is still a lack of solutions to manage documents and to provide a holistic view of processes.
Companies still need a link between SAP and the non-SAP world. With the multitude of software used within the organization today, an intelligent enterprise content management (ECM) system is indispensable. The ECM system forms the bridge between SAP and the documents that cannot be mapped in SAP. One example is the classic purchase-to-pay(P2P) process in SAP. While the traditional process takes up to 14 days to process and approve an incoming invoice in paper format, the digital route is three times faster. For many companies, processing takes just two minutes.
However, it in no way means reducing the number of employees. Rather, they can deal with the topics that add value to your company. With the comprehensive solutions in SAP, which can be optimally adapted to individual company processes, the step towards digitizing your P2P process is stress-free.
With the combination of SAP and ECM, companies are prepared for the digital future: This way, you build the bridge between the world of documents and the world of data and create the ideal prerequisite for intelligent information and process management. Even I can't tell you what the future will really look like. However, digitization is definitely not a trend that will disappear again. Rather, digital technologies are the most important enabler for equipping your company profitably and securely for the challenges ahead.
We help you achieve your digitization goals and make the optimal solutions for your company a reality: starting with intensive consulting, through implementation and support, to partial or complete takeover of the operation of corresponding solutions in the (full) managed service model. We understand and support you!
