Organisations can address sustainability through cultural, habit and perception gaps on increased digitisation, according to Nitro, a software vendor of PDF editing, e-signature and document analytics applications.
After achieving leadership buy-in for sustainability, firms may still face culture gaps, difficulty in changing employee habits – such as documenting tasks in physical notebooks – and myths surrounding accessibility, the vendor said in a new blog post.
“While the majority of CxOs are concerned about climate change and believe a digital culture is the solution, a reality check with your employees may prove otherwise,” Nitro said.
It said that many may think digital transformation is further along, a culture-related “perceptual gap” that can hold progress back. Instead, Nitro recommends that organisations work to close these gaps, lincluding by setting up sustainability-focused groups and meetings to deliver greater transparency, accountability and initiatives.
At the same time, Nitro pinpointed longstanding employee habit as a roadblock. When it comes to keeping workflows and processes out of the printing queue, some workers may still behave as if legal signatures required printing and training needed presentation in hardcopy booklets or folders.
Training can be required to help user adoption of, for instance, e-document management and productivity applications, especially when new processes are involved. A strong change management strategy and gradual approach to full digitisation can be needed, said Nitro.
Many organisations also suffer from what Nitro calls an “accessibility myth” about the expense of digital tools, including PDF and e-signature for everyone involved in a process or workflow — pointing to older ‘industry-standard’ offerings that can be heavy on features not required by everyone.
Yet today’s lightweight tools may be more suitable, Nitro maintained.
“Compromise leaves the other 90% [of workers] ill-equipped to participate in a fully digital workflow and forces them into the printer and scanner cycle,” it pointed out.
Measuring the impact of yefforts post-implementation to maintain buy-in is also important, it added.
Nitro is promoting an free ebook on digital evolution which aims to break down the steps to digitisation, analysis and optimisation for e-documentation enabled workflows and productivity, which readers can download here, and one on driving sustainability through digitalisation, here.
“Digitalisation presents a world of opportunities for organisations of all sizes, whether you want to save trees or save costs,” the vendor said. “In a recent Deloitte report, 87% of executives agreed investing in environmentally sustainable practices has long-term economic benefits.”
Nitro offered figures from a Forrester total economic impact (TEI) study demonstrating savings from adoption of its own Nitro Pro Business productivity platform, which also includes data analytics.
Among the four customers analysed, top results included $2.2 million total financial benefits over three years, a 694% return on investment and payback in under 6 months, and 35 minutes saved per document, according to Nitro.
“Across three years, customers saved an average of $22,347 in paper and postage with Nitro Sign,” the company said.
“One manufacturing organisation reduced prints from 1,000,000 to 300,000 (70%), leveraging Nitro insights to create digital transformation business cases and to spread sustainability awareness.”
( Photo by Marissa Grootes on Unsplash )
