Digitisation: The key to SMB success
Quocirca’s Print 2025 Spotlight report Digitisation: the key to SMB success reveals that SMBs are accelerating their digitisation initiatives through the use of digital workflow services and solutions, as they seek to drive business efficiency and employee productivity.
Digital technologies are transforming the SMB landscape, creating opportunities for businesses of all sizes to compete on a level playing field. Increasing mobility, changing workforce expectations and customer preferences for seamless interactions, are pushing SMBs to improve efficiency, agility and productivity to stay ahead.
Heading towards a “paper-lite” workplace
The majority of SMBs expect to remain reliant on printed documents, with 76% of SMBs saying that printed documents are important to their business. However, this reliance comes at a cost, with over half of respondents indicating that they are struggling to reduce paper usage, consumables costs and enhance security. Consequently, fewer SMBs (66%) expect to be reliant on printing by 2025, reflecting that a transition, albeit gradual, to a paper-lite workplace is underway.
Although often hampered by budget and resource constraints, SMBs are positive about the impact of digitisation. Overall, 81% of SMBs believe digitising paper-based processes will be important for driving their organisation’s digital transformation by 2025. In fact, 49% expect paper digitisation to be very important, compared to 13% today. Over 60% of SMBs believe all paper documents should be scanned and over two thirds (67%) expect greater use of document capture, workflow and collaboration tools to lead to reduced printing between now and 2025. There are some regional variations – 90% of large US SMBs see increased document capture and workflow as the biggest driver, compared to 64% of large European SMBs.
However, despite a drive towards improving employee productivity and business efficiency, today, less than 50% of SMBs are using digital workflow solutions such as document capture, mobile data capture or ECM solutions. However, there is certainly an interest to increase digital workflow adoption, with almost half expecting to expand usage of solutions in these areas. For more key findings download the Print 2025 SMB Digitisation Infographic.
The opportunity for MPS suppliers
The appetite for digitisation, coupled with a continued need to use paper in certain circumstances, is a significant opportunity for managed print service (MPS) providers to articulate a clear proposition around integrated paper and digital workflow services and solutions.
By incorporating document workflow solutions that leverage existing investments in smart MFPs – such as document capture, document management or document collaboration, a managed print service (MPS) can provide the foundation for digital transformation. Most leading MPS providers offer a broad portfolio of digital workflow solutions – from simple tools for scanning and routing expense receipts directly at the MFP to more sophisticated business process automation and digital workflow services.
As SMBs look for guidance in supporting digital initiatives, MPS providers that offer the skills and expertise to drive efficiency and productivity improvements through paper and digital workflow
automation will be best positioned to succeed.
The Global Print 2025 Spotlight Report Digitisation: key to SMB success contains detailed analysis of the trends and opportunities amongst European and US SMBs. The report provides essential guidance for suppliers to help plan and position MPS and digital workflow products and services for SMBs.
Email