Managing corporate information effectively can have a major impact on the way enterprises work – from reducing paper bills to premises size, explains Ben Richmond.

As the Office for National Statistics announces the UK economy is just coming out of recession with a 0.1% growth in the national economy, UK organisations are still reeling from the impact of a 4.8% decline in output in 2009.  And with unclear growth predictions for 2010, organisations must continue to focus heavily on reducing fixed costs and improving efficiency in a bid to stay competitive during the worst recession in post-war history. 

But in a bid to cut costs, far too many organisations are resorting to reducing numbers of customer-facing, sales and revenue generating staff, rather than back office and admin roles which are perceived as fixed costs. These customer facing staff are not only key to winning and retaining customers in a challenging marketplace, but will be essential to grasp new opportunities as and when the economic outlook improves.

Instead, organisations need to reduce costs without affecting competitive advantage. 

Rationalisation

In recent years, many organisations have opted to digitise information in a bid to remove the paper mountain, and significantly reduce the costs associated with both internal and external paper storage – a strategy that also addresses environmental policies. Enterprise content management (ECM) technologies also provide fantastic opportunities to rationalise the business and fundamentally reduce fixed costs. The quickest wins can be attained by regionally dispersed businesses, which can leverage ECM to close one or more local offices and introduce home working.

By improving information management and enabling web based self-service access to tailored information views for staff, an organisation can implement a strong, effective home and mobile working strategy. Should some staff be resistant to this, effective information management enables hot desking, thus facilitating the closure of a large office and its replacement with a smaller, cheaper lease.

Alternatively, ECM enables organisations to centralise document handling and information flows, without creating any degradation to service quality. Combining digital capture with business process management and collaborative platforms, an organisation can seamlessly move regional information and post management to a central location, whilst still delivering the same speed, accuracy and quality of information management.

Quantifiable Benefits

Leveraging these technologies to reduce the number of regional offices provides an immediate financial return. ECM’s ability to reduce dependency on local sites, whether these are used solely for storage or office space, can generate savings.

Once an organisation has closed one or two regional sites, achieved the financial benefits and realised that centralisation or home working does not result in any service degradation, they can embark upon a wider programme of site closure. Critically, this leaner organisation can not only significantly reduce its fixed costs, but also achieve incremental benefits, including greater staff efficiency through improved information management and collaboration.

Content management can improve information storage and management, reduce data duplication, enabling content to be repurposed to improve productivity and provide individuals with rapid access to tailored information views that reflect business roles. It is this transformation in information relevance and accessibility, combined with strong workflow and collaboration tools that can enable the entire organisation, and critically customer-facing staff, to become far more effective on a daily basis.

Self-Service

Improved information management also enables organisations to reduce the IT overhead. By combining strong information architecture that reduces data volumes and removes data duplication with virtualisation technology, organisations can significantly reduce the numbers of servers required. This strategy drives down both hardware and data centre costs, including power and air conditioning, which also has an impact on the carbon footprint.

Furthermore, effective web content management also enables companies to move more services online, leveraging the low cost of delivery for self-service ticketing and financials, for example, to further reduce costs and maximise the lower cost of delivery to gain competitive advantage.

Recession proof

Over the past year, as organisations have had to refocus attention from product development and expansion towards retrenching and improving the bottom line, too many have felt forced to make knee-jerk cost-cutting decisions that have actually compromised long-term business stability. By exploiting ECM technologies to radically reduce the fixed cost based through rationalisation and far more effective back office processes, organisations can not only achieve essential cost cutting today, but put in place an information management infrastructure that will also deliver incremental productivity improvements.

Critically, by adopting an ECM strategy that prioritises current financial objectives, but also encompasses a long term strategic vision, organisations will be able to leverage collaboration, self-service and tailored information provision to enhance service delivery as the economic conditions improve. After all, those who are fully prepared and efficient now will reap more benefits during the upturn and recovery.

Ben Richmond is CEO of The Content Group.