UK businesses are behind many of their competitors in Europe when it comes to digitalisation, new research shows.
Document solutions company Kyocera surveyed 1,750 business representatives, ranging from self-employed freelancers to professionals from international corporations, in seven European markets.
It found that while 61% of UK companies have digitalised at least half of their business documents, this is lower than in the Netherlands (74%), Italy (69%), Turkey (66%) and Spain (64%).
Only France (60%) and Germany (47%) are behind the UK, and companies in all three countries are at a disadvantage as their rivals gain a competitive edge through the streamlining of their operations, Kyocera said.
What’s more, 12% of UK organisations admit to barely having digitalised any of their documents – double the rate in Spain and Italy.
The study also suggests that the automation of business processes – another way of increasing productivity – will accelerate in the next few years, with nine in ten companies considering automating more processes over the next 12 months.
Yet while over a third (35%) of organisations said that using solutions such as Content Services, Enterprise Content Management and Document Management Systems to enhance automation is a ‘strategic priority’, another 44% are not aware of these solutions.
“We are seeing that UK companies face a variety of challenges such as securing vital information and storing documentation, without realising that easy solutions exist and are on the market in the form of document management solutions, such as Content Services,” commented Michael Powell, Expert Software Product Management at Kyocera Document Solutions Europe.
“The UK leads the way in some departments, such as Logistics and Legal, but significantly lags behind in both digitalisation and automation of areas such as Sales and Procurement. Such disparity between departments is reflective of the way in which companies are transitioning, and therefore still have some way to go.”
Digital transformation “is a boardroom issue in pretty much every company worldwide right now,” says Jeff Travers, head of IoT at Ericsson, in our Next-generation connectivity report. Download your copy of the report to read more!
