When DVD’s replaced VHS tapes, no one looked back. When streaming digital movies replaced those DVD’s, everyone expected them to be the norm. Yes, you can buy a DVD when it comes out in stores, but people will still expect it to be online in the cloud, ready to download at a moment’s notice.
Cloud technology is shaking things up, becoming the norm and people are not looking back. This is especially true in the finance industry. Customers expect to be able to access their financial documents online, work with e-signatures and have access to a digital audit trail. Employees expect to work more remotely, have access to information on the go and access documents anytime, anywhere.
Despite this growing need, 33% of AIIM community respondents, in a recent survey, still said that their storage solution is primarily paper-based.
So what’s the hold up?
66% of people who have moved to a cloud-based environment reported that they are now able to work more remotely after adding mobile and cloud solutions. 51% even reported improved collaboration between teams and offices.
Connecting through the cloud improves the workplace and customer experience in many ways. So let’s break a few down.
Increased productivity and efficiency
Paper-free processes help automate and streamline everyday tasks and responsibilities. These content management systems are customizable, industry tailored and safer than any of the current paper processes. Financial processes like applying for a loan typically take months as you pass contracts and approvals back and forth from applicants to departments and back to the broker. Now, these transactions, responses, signatures and approvals can be almost completely automated.
Visibility into audit trails, process quality, and view of the total workflow.
This can be make or break in finance. Being able to view an entire financial audit trail if anything were to come up is a must. Sifting through files and folders and tracking down each piece is a nightmare. It can easily be displayed at the click of a button and verified at each step.
Utilize your staff to more value added roles
Without painstaking hours spent manually entering each document or rewriting new contracts or changes, you can actually focus on higher level tasks that before would never make it off your to do list. Another immediate benefit is the return on ROI with a reduction in paper costs along with a reduction on inaccuracies from manual entries.
While it may take a little more time to make the jump and get those remaining 33% on board with the possibilities of digital transformation and cloud technologies, the benefits are still astounding. Just as the world is not moving backwards toward VHS tapes and CD’s, the banking industry and consumers are not looking back on old paper processes.
