Singapore
Singapore
A highly complex and rapid business environment can be daunting and full of unpredictability. Fortunately, with the right partner and tools, this landscape of uncertainty can be less perplexing and better managed.
Speaking on MoneyFM 89.3’s segment “Business Forward with Canon”, Ms Daphne Yeo, Senior Manager of Canon Business Services, shares how Canon can help companies move forward in today’s business landscape. Listen to the podcast here.
Canon Business Services is the specialist outsourcing and consultancy arm of Canon, providing services for businesses to improve the use of data and document handling for clients. Not only does it help clients transform their business processes for the better, it also changes the way its corporate partners engage with their customers.
As highlighted by Daphne Yeo, this arm of Canon consists of the company’s best – regardless of the hardware or software solutions and services, it strives to help customers achieve “process innovation” in the area of document digitisation.
Process innovation, as defined by Daphne, is the transformation of existing business processes for the better, aimed at bringing greater value to a business. This includes streamlining operations to speed up processing times, and looking for new ways to improve one’s product or service quality. Process innovation aims to help businesses become more efficient and productive through process re-engineering and optimisation.
Digitisation and automation are some possible ways to achieve process innovation. For instance, with the large amount of data produced every second, technological tools are needed to transform them into digestible information that can potentially help in decision-making, says Daphne.
With the advancement of robotics and artificial intelligence, these self-learning tools can break down large amounts of data into meaningful takeaways. This can, in turn, help companies build effective customer profiles and hopefully even predict their future buying patterns.
Capturing effective data and doing proper analysis can help companies gain invaluable insights into their business processes, such as identifying unique patterns, managing critical checkpoints and eliminating bottleneck delays. Using this knowledge to create actionable plans can also help companies improve both their processes and customer experience significantly, she asserts.
Citing customer service call centres as an example, Daphne underscores how process innovation enhances workflow efficiency. When customers call in with inquiries, they desire a seamless, productive experience and expect their problems to be solved with just one phone call. This requires the call operator to have all the information needed from the get-go. With Canon’s digitisation solutions, professional consultants can easily retrieve customers’ information, account details and address their problems efficiently and effectively.
Technology and process automation thus afford companies to continually strive towards improving their operations and efficiency. But faster processing speeds are not the only benefit that companies can enjoy from digitisation – they also bring about significant cost-savings.
Daphne notes that while digitisation has been popular in recent years, many companies still choose to work with paper files. Files that are accumulated over the years are usually stored in an off-site facility or take up an expensive real estate in the office, and are often prone to degradation. This is not a practical way to keep records, particularly in Singapore where space is limited. Most importantly, the environment in which we operate in demands instantaneous access to information and flipping through paper files is counter-productive – which is where Canon Business Services comes in.
Her most recent digitisation project involved helping a client convert huge stores of paper files into digital copies and storing them in the ThereforeTM Management Document System. With all the information consolidated into a central platform, document retrieval has been a breeze and precious man-hours can now be turned into more productive labour, not to mention the amount of space freed up for business expansion. This success story is but one of countless examples attributable to digitisation and Canon Business Services.
A critical ingredient to successful process innovation requires a change to start from the top, Daphne says. Leaders need to take the chance to improve and step out of their comfort zone in order to stay competitive. She also emphasised that the level of resistance from the staff towards this change depends greatly on the ease of the shift. Thus, strong leadership is imperative to bring the company through this often-stressful period.
Process innovation isn’t just a fad; our ever-evolving business landscape demands companies to keep up with the times and adapt accordingly. The consequences of not embracing digitisation can potentially lead to the downfall of a company, warns Daphne. Her thoughts harken Professor Venky Shankararaman’s insights, as both implore businesses to innovate so as to stay competitive, relevant, and ahead of the curve, or risk being obsolete.
In this fast-paced business landscape where change is the only constant, Canon Business Services is here to get you up to speed. Find out more about Canon Business Services here, or call our operators for more information.
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