Ctrl + Alt + Repeat: Why the COVID-driven acceleration in digitising business processes could be short-lived

Business processes play a critical role in ensuring organisations function effectively. Governing the way organisational objectives are achieved, they impact every part of a business. The way information is handled provides a good example - from the mailroom and invoicing, to HR and vendor contract management, every business will have processes in place to ensure efficiency, security and compliance of their operations.

However, it is an unfortunate fact that processes in many companies are rife with inefficiency, particularly when it comes to storage costs and accessing archived files.

Transforming physical records to digital is an effective way of streamlining workflows, and has been proven to save both time and money. For this reason, most companies already have plans in place to digitise key processes. The transition, however, is often classed as a low priority, and has been gradual as a result. Until COVID-19 that is.

The pandemic has changed everything. With remote operations now central to business survival, companies had to deploy new digital solutions in timescales previously thought impossible.

According to McKinsey, the progress of digital adoption jumped five years into the future in just eight weeks.

It’s an unprecedented response to an unprecedented situation. We at Iron Mountain were keen to take the pulse of the European data management function to understand the impact these new technologies are having.

In August 2020, we commissioned a survey of 1,000 people responsible for managing business data in enterprises (250+ employees) in Western Europe. Our data confirmed the scale of the digital transformation taking place, while also revealing some unexpected findings.