As we reflect on the year that was 2020, one of the standout themes was what Boston Consulting Group (BCG) called “the world’s biggest ever workplace experiment”. We’re speaking, of course, about the extraordinary speed at which business moved to remote working. Within weeks of the onset of the pandemic, almost of the 60% workforce, whose roles allowed working from home, were doing so.
BCG predicts that in 2021, 40% of the workforce will continue to work from home, and 25% will adopt a hybrid model.
Unsurprisingly, when the pandemic struck, businesses focussed immediately on investments in technology that enabled teams to communicate effectively, regardless of location.
However, while business embraced the flexibility of working from home, the model also exposed glaring weaknesses in handling business information. Many businesses have simply not thought through the effective management of critical documents that are the engine room of every business – policies, procedures, manuals, product information etc.
Pre-Covid Frustrations
Even before Covid-19, it was frustrating enough at the office, finding the right information.
Most organisations have made significant investments in platforms such as SharePoint for managing their documents. However, while secure and scalable, the weaknesses of SharePoint are many: storing content in massive repositories with complex file structures, limited metadata, version control problems, duplicated files and clunky search. McKinsey estimates that 16% of every information worker’s day is spent searching for documents.
In document heavy industries such as government, engineering, financial services, health, mining, aged care, telco and utilities, frustration is especially high as staff contend with long downloads and endless scrolling through Word and PDF documents.
Don’t try this at home!
But, when working from home, the problems are magnified. Staff download documents to individual drives, thereby compromising security and version management and further dispersing content across multiple locations. This means that the organisations not only lose any semblance of control over where critical business information resides, they are now
exposed to operational risk through staff making critical decisions based on out of date or incorrect information.
Taking back control
With the hybrid home and office working model now a permanent feature, there is no time to be lost in regaining control over your documents.
A Vaccine for Business Information
The good news is that new technology is now available to solve the problem. By taking a totally different approach, 1WordFlow has eliminated the issues of duplicated information, dispersed repositories, version management and long PDF downloads.
A web-based view of your business documents
1WordFlow is a world leader in digital web documents. Our unique software extracts the content within Word and PDF documents and then re-presents this material as secure digital web pages. 1WordFlow works at scale and can store thousands of pages of content online.
We work closely with M365 and SharePoint, where the source documents are created and stored. However, the major difference is that we generate a web-based view of the content. This means that authorised staff can instantly access any page, of any document, in SharePoint via a browser, without having to download anything.
It also eliminates versioning, duplication and location issues. With 1WordFlow’s digital view, the staff member can only view the latest, most up-to-date version.
Vaccinating SharePoint
1WordFlow improves the usability of SharePoint (& other CMS platforms) in multiple ways:
- Enhanced Search – As every page has its own URL, search is fast and accurate
- Auto-classification – The software tags each webpage according to topics discussed
- Contextualisation – Related content is only one click away
- Version Control – Only the latest version is viewable on the web
- Multilingual – Instant translation into 100 languages
- Accessible – Full WCAG compliance
- User Analytics – Data is captured for any page or section
- Active Directory – Seamless integration with Active Directory
- Instant feedback – Users can comment on any section of any page in real time
- Comprehension – knowledge tests for training and compliance can be added to any page
Leveraging your Investment
Before Covid-19, it was common for business to invest in new technology based on ROI.
This is no longer good enough. In 2021, with the pandemic still a reality and budgets under scrutiny, success will largely depend on organisations harnessing technology that:
- Empowers staff wherever they are physically located
- Embraces create once, use many, (not the opposite) principles
- Better utilises the organisational knowledge assets
- Reduces operational risk
- Delivers a great user experience
- Leverages the technology investment they have already made
1WordFlow ticks all these boxes.
With digital web documents, organisations can get better value from their SharePoint investment and to bring their content under control – in weeks.
