The market fluctuates, job positions change, and business strategies are altered, but one constant in business is the use of technology in the workplace. As technology continues to advance, digital solutions have played a critical role in determining how businesses progress.

Once technology entered the workplace there was no going back. Wi-Fi became necessary, cloud systems provided an easy way for employees to share and view digital documents, and smartphones allow for easier communication among coworkers, clients, and suppliers. Today we look toward automation and finding more ways to create a productive virtual work environment.

Technology in the workplace eventually began to define business operations and even influence consumer desires and behaviors. Businesses strive to stay on top of what customers are looking for and learn how to make their operations more efficient which is where automation technology and artificial intelligence (AI) learning give businesses a competitive edge. Businesses will rely more and more on technology in the workplace, even if that workplace is virtual.

Brief History of Technology in the Workplace

In the 1980s, technology in the workplace started becoming common with the introduction of personal work computers, laptops, and the world’s first cell phone. Suddenly, there were new avenues for businesses to explore thanks to technology.

In the 1990s came the internet. The internet came around in 1989, but in the 90s we started seeing it being used more frequently in the work environment. With the internet, businesses could better communicate to their clients or suppliers and it also allowed them to expand their clientele through the use of emails, websites, and e-commerce stores.

In the 2000s, the cloud was introduced and became the new technology in the workplace. Businesses began digitizing their data and uploading it to a secure cloud for simple storage, organization, and file sharing. Smartphones also became part of the norm which gave businesses opportunities to reach their consumers in more unique ways.

In the 2010s, technology was completely integrated into the workplace. Some companies already implemented a solution for employees who worked from home or spent a lot of time traveling. 

At this time, we were introduced to the Internet of Things (IoT). We started seeing IoT devices that connected to just about anything from motion sensors to speakers. It became common to implement software integrations that helped to streamline workflows or hardware integrations that could connect to other devices. As everything became more connected, the possibilities began growing.

Today’s Technology in the Workplace

While technology in the workplace was already growing, the COVID-19 pandemic forced businesses to shoot ahead with their digital solutions. With lockdown initiatives and people choosing to stay at home to stay safe, it became a requirement to have specific digital solutions in place to ensure that productivity remained the same and workflows were unhindered while people worked remotely.

According to a McKinsey Global Survey, 93% of companies shifted to remote work during the pandemic and 34% reported migrating assets to the cloud more quickly. There's no denying that the pandemic pushed digital transformation forward quickly.

At this point, technology is essential to create an effective and smart work environment for employees, especially in companies that continue to have employees working fully remote or working in a hybrid environment.

Today, technology revolves around the ability to work from a distance or to automate tedious and repetitive tasks to cut down on costs and make operations more efficient. Companies are now relying on platforms and software to help streamline workflows and allow employees to easily collaborate. Many are digitizing document files to ensure that employees, no matter their location, can access certain documents in a cloud.

Companies are also providing more online support for their consumers as the expectation of connectivity grows. Companies are ensuring that a service, whether it's an e-commerce site or a solution, would work just as well on a desktop as it would on a mobile device. These tools have become a critical aspect of business operations, and digital transformation has become a priority for many businesses to remain competitive.

If we look ahead, we can expect to see further automation and technology in the workplace. Over 50% of workers believe that technology will determine changes in the workplace within the next 5 to 10 years. In a sense, we're already seeing this as many companies that are embracing digital transformation have required a digital security team specifically in place, thus creating new jobs.

Around 70% of employees feel good about increasing automation and technology in the workplace stating it will increase their productivity and free up their time to work on less repetitive tasks and more creative ones.

It's not news that technology in the workplace has the capability of increasing creativity and productivity. In 2019, before the pandemic, employees who worked in an environment that supplied automation and technology were 31% more productive.

Benefits of Technology in the Workplace

Technology in the workplace benefits companies, employees, and consumers. With the use of automation and helpful software, organizations have been able to increase their efficiency quickly, especially with automation. Many tasks that were once time-consuming to complete manually can be done rapidly and accurately using an automated system. As we mentioned before, this allows employees more time to focus on more strategic and creative aspects of their position rather than spending time on tedious tasks.

While many people have touted fears about technology reducing jobs, AI is expected to create 97 million new jobs by 2025. The implementation of AI will by itself create positions that we haven't needed before. As an example, when cloud systems and software were first introduced to companies, there became a need for IT and digital security teams. As more technology in the workplace is introduced, we’ll begin to see more positions open.

Any company that had to or continues to operate remotely or on a hybrid system understands the importance of technology in the workplace. Even for companies that require on-site workers, technology in the workplace still benefits them. Not only can automation technology remove tedious tasks and perform them more accurately and more quickly, but many different platforms and software systems allow employees to better collaborate, create workflows, and streamline operations.

As technology advances, companies are also finding more ways to connect with their consumers through various devices and platforms. Through social media, mobile apps, and e-commerce stores, companies can easily reach their customers and provide online services and products.

Challenges of Technology in the Workplace

Technology brings many benefits into the workplace, but it also comes with challenges that businesses need to face. One such challenge includes making sure employees are appropriately trained in any technology that’s being used. While companies may push forward to implement digital solutions, in their haste, they may forget the proper training and security that is involved with any technology. Technology must be introduced at a steady pace to ensure guidelines are made and appropriate training takes place.

Another challenge with technology is prioritizing security, including antivirus software, VPNs, and passwords. Businesses require effective tools and good organizational skills to ensure that secure information remains safe. A security breach can lead to important data being lost, consumer trust declining, and time being spent fixing anything that went down during the breach.

As more companies implement technology, workers experience benefits but also challenges, particularly with having a healthy work-life balance. It's more difficult for employees to unplug when they can carry their work with them on their phones. Many employees will still respond to emails past work hours. Employees may receive notifications from emails or chats that can distract them when they're focusing on a particular task. Encouraging a healthy work-life balance and implementing a system that allows employees to unplug while they focus on a specific task may be very useful and help employees remain productive.

Conclusion

Technology in the workplace is not new. With the start of floppy disks and personal laptops, technology in the workplace has become an ever-present constant in today's work environment. Just like everything else in business, it will continue to evolve but instead of taking a back seat and playing a supporting role as it did in the past, technology is being pushed further and further to the forefront to where business operations are now relying on and expecting improvements in technology to run more efficiently.

Digital transformation is more important now than ever. It's expected that by 2025 companies will invest around 2.8 trillion in digital transformation. Business process outsourcing (BPO) and business process automation (BPA) providers such as Exela, help companies take steps to further their digital transformation. Finding digital solutions can be daunting and relying on a BPA provider can help to better implement technology in the workplace.

View Exela case studies that show the many benefits companies experienced with digital transformation.

 With companies taking steps toward digital transformation, numerous business process automation tools exist to streamline business operations. Automation offers many possibilities but it can be overwhelming to consider all the options. Deciding where to start when implementing an automation tool may seem daunting.

In implementing automation, each business has unique needs that greatly depend on the size of the company and the industry. With that being said, there are some common automation tools that most companies can consider as their first steps toward automation. First, let’s cover what business process automation tools are.

Brief Overview of Business Process Automation Tools

Business process automation tools take over repetitive tasks, streamline systems, increase accuracy in processes, and perform these processes more quickly. These tasks range from sending customer service emails to manually editing a healthcare claim. Automation tools step in and complete these daily operations thus freeing up employees' time to focus on more strategic or creative projects.

Also, most automation tools come with an auditable trail allowing leaders to find possible inefficiencies or bottlenecks. This visibility makes it easier to determine problem points the company may be facing.

Automation tools often can provide invaluable data that teams can use to make more informed decisions. So business process automation tools take control of repetitive tasks, offer visibility into the workflow, and often provide data into the operations.

Systems to Automate First 

While each company will have different needs, there is one specific automation tool that is applicable to most businesses and that is paper digitization. One study by the Statistic Research Department shows that 6.78 billion US dollars will be spent on document management systems by 2023 worldwide. 

Documents are ubiquitous in almost every business whether it's HR onboarding documents, important client information, or contracts. Not only does digitizing paper free up office space, but it also cuts down on the time that employees use to find these physical documents and offers a more secure way to store them.

There are a few ways to begin paper digitization. Various departments may use paper for different reasons so leaders need to decide what they'll be digitizing first.

Digital Mailroom - Digitizing Inbound Mail

With solutions like Exela’s Digital Mailroom (DMR), many documents can be transformed into digital documents including inbound mail, check deposits, and resumes. This is a great way to start the digitization process, especially with companies that have remote workers. Digital Mailroom offers an easy way for employees to access their mail and other documents regardless of where they’re working. 

DMR takes physical mail and turns it into a digital asset that can be stored securely and sent to the recipients with ease. This cost-effective solution is significantly more convenient than the recipient needing to retrieve their mail from a specific location or having a courier deliver it to them.

Digital Mailroom integrates with other systems including automatic check deposit and invoice management, accelerating downstream processes. With a solution like DMR, companies significantly cut down on time-consuming processes such as sorting through mail, confirming the right recipient receives it, and storing or destroying it.

Paper Digitization

Along with digitizing mail, another great first business process automation tool is document management. For companies that house and store multiple physical documents, Document Digitization may be just the solution they need. 

Documents are scanned, digitized, and can be stored in a secure web portal for employees to easily access. Many of these document management systems include the ability to grant or deny access to certain people to ensure the document remains secure. 

Physical documents can become damaged or lost and employees can spend a significant amount of time searching for physical documents that could be spent elsewhere. Digitizing and managing documents by using a business process automation tool makes it easier to share, edit, and store documents.

Industry or Business Specific Needs

From here on out, selecting a business process automation tool comes down to the industry and specific needs of the business. Here are some examples of systems that different businesses may want to incorporate as their first steps in digital transformation.

Healthcare - Claims Processing

Claims processing is a tedious and complex but extremely important task in the healthcare revenue cycle. Because of this, it is a process that cannot be overlooked and each error or slow processing time could result in delayed or inaccurate payments. 

A business process automation tool such as Exela’s PCH Global solution can streamline the claims processing operations. PCH Global can identify certain-to-deny claims speeding up the process of comparing claims to the benefits of coverage requirements. 

With its suggested edits, PCH Global can improve the first pass rate before a claim is submitted. Companies using PCH Global can experience a 35% reduction in administrative costs and at least a 25% reduction in denials and rejections.

Finances - Procure-to-Pay

Procure-to-pay (P2P) is the process of procuring goods and paying for the goods hence the term procure-to-pay. P2P is frequently automated using business process automation tools such as Exela’s P2P solution. A business process automation tool can streamline the P2P process helping to manage every step of the process from the purchase to receipt to invoice approval and payment. Exela’s P2P solution reduces non-PO spend and procurement errors while improving turnaround times and has reduced internal costs by 40%.

A P2P solution provides companies with AP automation which allows easy collaboration between buyers, suppliers, service providers, and financial institutions. While reducing costs and improving cash flow, it also creates increased visibility into the AP process.

Exela’s P2P solution captures, organizes, and refines data for buyers and suppliers that includes audit trails, transaction logs and authentications. It can also automate ordering, invoicing, approvals, and payments.

Marketing - Data Reporting

Many companies choose to start their digital transformation process since business process automation tools for marketing can increase the ROI significantly. Nucleus research discovered that for every dollar spent on marketing automation, companies saw a return of $5.44.

By using automation tools like Exela’s Predictive Modeling and Data Analytics, a component of Exela’s XME solution, companies can refine their target messaging and enhance customer experience. Marketing automation tools can collect and aggregate data, perform sentiment analysis, and help with customer segmentation and prediction. 

Marketing automation solutions often use AI to continually learn and improve their predictions. Exela’s XME solution offers even more including cross-media marketing campaigns, print and promotional item management, and marketing operations support.

Final Thoughts

Business process automation tools make daily operations quicker, more efficient, more accurate, and reduce costs. In our current digital-first era, businesses that don't implement digital solutions fall behind. If you're still feeling overwhelmed by all the possibilities that business process automation has to offer, consider reaching out to Exela to learn more about how automation and technology can improve your business processes.