Process efficiency top IT objective

by Mark Brousseau, guest blogger

Making business processes more efficient and effective is the top objective of IT investments for 90 percent of the private companies surveyed for PricewaterhouseCoopers' latest Private Company Trendsetter Barometer. Streamlining business processes topped better management of enterprise data (identified by 75 percent of respondents), optimizing business information and analytics (73 percent), making business more agile (58 percent), and attracting new customers (58 percent).

And how do the companies hope to improve their business processes? Forty percent say they are likely to invest in cloud computing. What's more, over half of these companies stated that their investments in cloud-based solutions will be focused on "innovation," rather than "maintenance."

I think these companies have the right idea.

Technology plays a critical role in transforming operations and driving competitiveness for private and public companies. As companies look to better position themselves to take advantage of the economic recovery, they'll need a digital platform in place to capture, manage and deliver mission-critical data as efficiently and effectively as possible -- an area where cloud-based solutions shine.

Leveraging cloud-based solutions enables organizations to take a fresh approach to labor-intensive and error-prone document-driven business processes. For instance, eGistics' CloudDocs on-line document management solution eliminates the burden of determining where to store documents -- in terms of files and folders. It can recognize bar codes, which many businesses use to organize packets of documents, or even load documents into the system for indexing later. And once documents are loaded into CloudDocs, users don’t have to worry about where they are located; with a simple command, CloudDocs retrieves them instantly.

This type of functionality can streamline a wide range of applications -- accounts payable, accounts receivable, human resources and legal, to name a few -- freeing staff to focus more of their time on core competencies, servicing customers or developing innovative new products or services.

In my opinion, that makes IT investments in cloud computing money well spent.
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Mark Brousseau, Brousseau & Associates
Mark Brousseau is a noted marketer, analyst, speaker, and writer, with more than 16 years of experience advising leading providers of payments and document automation solutions.

Brousseau is president of Brousseau & Associates, a full-service marketing, PR and business development firm based in Central Pennsylvania. With the largest client base of any independent marketing firm specializing in the payments and document automation arenas, Brousseau & Associates counts among its clients many top solutions and services providers.

You can follow Mark on Twitter @markbrousseau