Benefits, costs and risks of business process digitisation programs
When planning business process digitisation programs, it's important to be aware of the benefits, costs and risks involved.
Potential benefits
When carefully considered, planned, and managed, business process digitisation programs can offer a range of benefits for an organisation. For example, digitisation can help organisations:
- improve business process efficiency, quality, and consistency
- integrate records with digital systems
- enhance accessibility and facilitate better knowledge sharing
- improve response times and client service
- reduce costs
- promote greater staff flexibility
- better plan for business continuity.
Digitisation alone doesn’t automatically improve how your organisation works. However, it’s often a good chance to review and improve your existing business processes. A digitisation program can help identify areas where things can be done more efficiently.
When you digitise, you can make processes more consistent by using the same rules for classification, security, and access. It also helps with indexing, so information is easier to find.
With digitisation, information can flow through the system in an organised way, making it easier for staff to work together and improving overall efficiency.
Get more information on planning for business process digitisation.
Digitisation programs offer a chance to integrate paper records into existing systems, such as an EDRMS (Electronic Document and Records Management System).
This means that, in areas where digitisation is introduced, staff no longer need to rely on hybrid records (both paper and digital records). Instead, they can be confident that the digital records provide a complete and accurate account of the business conducted from the point digitisation begins.
When digital images are stored in an EDRMS, they can be controlled and managed as official records.) Access and security controls can be applied to ensure the records are read-only and tamper-proof.
Additionally, these records can be kept in context with related information and managed effectively over time. This improves the organisation’s ability to safeguard and organise important records.
Digital images offer greater accessibility compared to paper records, as they can be accessed from any location without being physically present.
These images can be shared across networks, viewed at the same time by multiple people, copied, and disseminated quickly and easily to different stakeholders. With records in digital form, knowledge transfer is more efficient, allowing staff to reuse information and save time.
However, if you are working on a back-capture digitisation program to improve access, it’s important to ensure that the digitisation process is well-managed. Accessibility will only be improved if the program is carefully controlled.
For instance, if you don’t gather enough metadata at the start and lack proper quality checks, it could make it harder to retrieve records later, rather than improving access.
Get more information on metadata requirements and benchmarks and quality assurance.
If a digitisation program is robust, it is much easier and quicker to retrieve and view digital images rather than the original paper records, particularly for time-critical matters. This can, in turn, reduce the time taken to respond to clients.
A digitisation program can help reduce costs related to storage, management, and access to records.
One key area where costs can be cut is in storage. After records are digitised, the original paper documents may no longer be needed, and they could potentially be destroyed.
This can free up physical storage space and reduce ongoing storage, staff processing, and transport costs. However, it is essential to confirm upfront whether the original paper records can legally be destroyed after digitisation.
Get more information disposal of original paper records after digitisation.
Note: When original paper records are destroyed, the digital images become the official records in their place and must be retained according to requirements set out in retention and disposal authorities. It is important to factor in the costs of managing and migrating the images over time.
Digitisation can help organisations to take advantage of new technologies and allow staff to access records in diverse locations - for example, some organisations are investigating allowing their staff access to digital records, including digital images, in their EDRMS via mobile devices.
Digital records are much easier to duplicate. Records can be backed-up using the organisation’s normal back-up procedures and included in disaster recovery procedures.
Vital records – records essential to the functioning of the organisation – can be protected from disaster and secured in different locations in digital form.
Potential costs
Digitisation can seem like a cost-effective solution, but it's important to recognise that the costs can be significant and vary depending on the scope of the program and the quality of the digital images needed. Some common costs to consider include:
- Physical conversion of hard-copy records (the digitisation process) is labour-intensive and can be very expensive
- Digitisation software and hardware, including upgrades
- Training and support for staff involved in the digitisation process (often included in contracts with software and hardware suppliers)
- Space for digitisation work to take place
- Health and safety assessments and measures to ensure staff safety
- Staff time for planning, establishing, and documenting the program with appropriate benchmarks
- Staff time for preparing records, digitising them, applying metadata, conducting quality control checks, monitoring and evaluating the program
- Managing challenges such as non-uniform or poor-quality original records
- Technical infrastructure and storage space for maintaining digital records
- Software on desktops for viewing digital images
- Training and change management strategies for all staff who will access the digital images
- Ongoing maintenance and updates to systems
- Managing digital images over time, including costs of migration (if applicable)
To assess whether digitisation is a worthwhile investment, you can compare these costs to:
- The costs of inaction, such as the potential risks or inefficiencies of not digitising records.
- Potential savings from destroying original paper records (where relevant), leading to reduced storage costs.
- Potential savings from improving practices and providing better access to records.
Risks of digitisation
The following table outlines some potential risks and means to mitigate them.
| Risks | Can be mitigated by |
|---|---|
| That money will be wasted or additional risks incurred by poor selection of records |
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| That the complexities of digitisation can be underestimated |
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| That the costs of digitisation can be underestimated |
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That original paper records cannot be destroyed after digitisation e.g. due to legal reasons to retain them in original format, intrinsic value or other reasons |
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That original paper records, including State archives, will be destroyed without authorisation |
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That digitisation will not result in an authentic representation of the original paper record that is fit for purpose See benchmarks and quality assurance |
|
That digital images are not stored or protected appropriately |
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That duplicates or derivatives are not managed appropriately |
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That digital images will not survive and remain accessible and useable for as long as they are required |
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| That there will be problems experienced with service providers |
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Organisations should develop business cases which define anticipated risks, describe how they apply to the program, and show how they will be managed.