10 hurdles that can keep you from hitting your business goals

1. Security, compliance and governance

Ever-changing and always-increasing security, compliance and information governance regulations make it difficult to stay compliant, mitigate risk and move business forward.

Modern organizations consume, create and manage an unprecedented amount of content. Threats to this content increase every day. So does the complexity of the regulatory environment.

As the volume of information continues to grow, the need to comply with numerous regulations and standards for how it should be used, stored and destroyed grows alongside it. Manually managing the information lifecycle at this scale, without a robust records management tool, is no longer feasible. Failure to automate records management creates operational inefficiencies and unnecessary security and compliance risks.

To keep up, you need automated security and compliance tools that keep track of your information through its entire lifecycle, across the enterprise. Look for solutions that take security and compliance seriously by prioritizing data classification, data masking and redaction, encryption, role-based access controls, redundant configurations and more.

A federated retention and records management solution will allow you to automate the lifecycle of your content across various systems and repositories for enhanced operational efficiencies that help support security and compliance requirements.

Optimal product functionality includes multiple storage, archival and destruction options based on predefined schedules.

2. Information silos

Information silos across the organization impede collaboration, hamper efficiency and negatively impact customer service.

Teams across your organization need more than a central repository for internal assets. They should be using a complete workflow solution that optimizes the management process and reduces reliance on inefficient ad-hoc solutions like emails and shared drives.

Future-focused organizations prioritize and build their internal operations around technology solutions that feature federation, integration, sharing and collaboration capabilities. These features allow your cross-departmental teams to work seamlessly together, no matter where they’re located.

To modernize to this degree, look for a flexible, cloud-based content services solution that lets you organize, manage and optimize critical content across your organization. This gives users a complete view of the information they need, when and where they need it.

Being able to easily search and track content, effectively handle revisions and access the newest versions of information at any time means your employees can be more efficient, effective and collaborative.

3. Ever-changing business requirements

Your IT and operations departments can’t respond quickly enough to changing business requirements.

If your staff can’t react quickly enough to the initiatives that will help you and your organization meet its goals, don’t blame them.

This type of roadblock almost never results from a lack of passion or effort, but from a lack of resources. If you don’t invest in agile, responsive tech solutions, your people won’t be able to get innovative ideas off the ground.

Successful organizations are increasingly using low-code platforms to help developers deliver software faster. This acceleration of time-to-value drops development time from months to weeks and considerably reduces costs compared to custom-built applications.

Essentially, low-code platforms:

1. Lower the technical bar for line-of-business users who need the agility to configure their applications in response to change
2. Ease the pressure on stretched IT departments and competition for resources internally while freeing up IT to work on strategic projects
3. Significantly cut down on lengthy development cycles so you can rapidly design solutions and achieve ROI faster

Here’s another reason to prioritize a low-code development platform: You’re not the only one frustrated by this lack of agility in your IT department. If you don’t give your developers the modern, agile tools they need to work at the level they’d like, they’re going to join an organization that will.  

4. Customer expectations

Customer expectations are increasing faster than you can keep up.

Customers, clients, constituents, patients, claimants, students — whomever you serve, it’s your job to meet their expectations for responsiveness, speed, accuracy and personalization. When your employees can’t meet those expectations, customer experiences — and your reputation — quickly decline. It’s all connected.

Focus on customer experience: By shifting attention to customer relationships and prioritizing customer experience strategy, especially in times when budgets are tight and human connections are vital (even when they’re virtual), your organization can distinguish itself as one that prioritizes its customers in the best and worst of times.

To do so, you need to free your employees — in all roles and departments — from the manual, mundane tasks that make it difficult for them to spend time on your customers.

Intelligent automation and robotic process automation (RPA) can help your organization manage its processes and data more efficiently. This gives your employees more time to focus on high-value work that improves customer experience. By combining technologies like workflow automation, business logic, machine learning and analytics, automation should be a driving force behind your digital transformation.

5. Employee retention

Maintaining employee retention, engagement and productivity

In the wake of The Great Resignation, leaders have had to examine what contributes to employee experience (which in turn contributes to engagement, productivity and retention).

According to Gartner, employees are now seeking increased personal value and purpose at work.

“People have developed a new sense of awareness and worth for themselves and the world around them. This is prompting them to demand more personal value and purpose from both life and work.”

Requiring employees to spend time on low-value, menial, manual work that could easily be automated is a virtual guarantee that they’ll start looking elsewhere for work that allows them more creativity and connection.

Also, consider that your employees are also consumers themselves. That means they’re now expecting consumer-like app experiences at work, especially those working from home.

For remote employees, the difference in software experience between intuitive consumer apps and clunky, outdated work apps can seem incredibly jarring, leading them to seek more progressive employers with better tools.

6. Tedious processes

Tedious processes overburden your employees and leave them with no time or energy to innovate.

Additionally, a survey by ABBY revealed that “six in 10 (61%) employees say their job is made more difficult through trouble accessing data in documents, and nearly a quarter (24%) lose a full day of productivity per week searching documents for information they need to serve customers.”

That means without enterprise-wide automation, you’re getting less accomplished by less satisfied employees.

That’s a recipe for disaster. Banish your employees’ busywork with robotic process automation (RPA).

Added bonus? Prioritizing a culture of innovation pays dividends beyond employee experience. In fact, it’s critical to your organization’s success. Overburdened, burnt-out employees have no time, energy or passion to devote to the initiatives that will differentiate and give your organization a competitive advantage.

7. Customers acquisition and retention

Acquiring new customers and retaining current ones

The importance of customer experience is well established. But excellent customer experience doesn’t always mean face-to-face interaction. In fact, your organization’s digital experience affects customer acquisition and retention as much as — if not more than — its human interactions.

In most industries, digital channels have become the preferred method for interaction and collaboration.

According to the J.D. Power 2020 U.S. Auto Insurance Study, for example, insurance company websites — for the first time in the study’s 21-year history — have officially surpassed agents in terms of importance to client interaction and service. People expect digital, on-demand solutions and are happy to take more control over their experience with self-service and self-scheduling capabilities.

The right content services platform enable your employees to respond to customer and prospect requests more quickly, and with more insightful, valuable responses. Coupled with customer communications management (CCM) software, you reduce the time and effort it takes to create individually personalized content.

With the ability to handle a wide range of communication needs, from large-volume batches to more interactive custom content and personalized on-demand requests, CCM solutions bring versatility and efficiency to your customer interactions.

8. New work patterns

Navigating new work patterns — including increasingly remote workforces and expectations for better digital employee and customer experiences — impedes progress toward your goals.

There’s no question that the world of work is changing more quickly than ever before. The COVID-19 pandemic forced us all to abandon our best-laid plans, modify our metrics and pivot our road maps, growth strategies and expectations.

Two of 2020’s most overused phrases ring true here: That’s the new normal, and we’re all in it together. Nobody escaped the large-scale shifts that affected you and your organization — including your customers and competitors.

Here’s who fared (and continues to fare) best amid the upheaval: those with an effective, cloud-based content services strategy.

An effective content services strategy “can insulate an organization from significant disruption and allow it to bounce back from any disruption more effectively,” finds a 2021 study by Forrester Consulting.

Prepare for whatever the future holds by focusing on transforming your business processes today. The agility, resilience and confidence you build into your organization now will future-proof it against whatever comes next.

9. Tech stack gaps

You know your organization needs to innovate to keep up, but gaps in your tech stack mean you’re struggling to even maintain status quo.

How easy is it for your organization to make adjustments to your processes to meet the changing demands of customers? What about adapting to meet the needs of your business?

Maintaining the status quo is no longer enough. Competitive pressures and disruptive threats mean, without continuous innovation, your organization will fall behind. Gaps in your organization’s technology mean you’re always fighting to just stay on pace.

The ability to shift gears quickly when needed is what Forrester Consulting calls “agile adaptivity” in a study commissioned by Hyland.

It (along with intelligent automation, tailored solutions and reimagining business models and processes) is one of four competency pillars Forrester identified as key alignment areas for mature content services strategies.

Content services embody the pillar of agile adaptivity, as they are built for flexibility and connection between people, information and systems.

10. Collaboration

Siloed technologies and processes exacerbate physical separation of employees, hindering the collaboration needed for innovation and improvement.

Your employees — wherever they’re located — are there to help you overcome challenges and meet your goals, not add new challenges.

But it’s up to you as a leader to make sure there’s nothing standing in their way. More and more, that means supplying them with the modern end-to-end content services capabilities that enable comprehensive process automation and information lifecycle management.

That way, your people are always working together from the same up-to-date information. This allows them to make better, quicker decisions and collaborate in ways that increase their satisfaction at work as well as help you stay competitive, embrace change and delight the people you serve.