Drinking our own champagne
Whilst the phrase “Eating your own dog food” is well known and accepted in our industry, especially since the first time most of us heard it was in the context of Microsoft using their own software, I much prefer the term “drinking our own champagne". The terms refer to the internal use of a company's own products or services in its day-to-day operations and it is a very useful way of understanding the rollout and impact of the solutions we offer.
Kyocera South Africa has been ‘drinking our own champagne’ for the past few years. We implemented our own ECM solution and incorporated the HR onboarding process from end-to-end, from the digital capture of required information for new staff members, the digital signing of employment documentation, managing policy documentation and managing the process from HR to departmental manager, finance, IT and back to human resources, as well as staff exit processes. In addition, expense claims, approval requests, digital signing of customer contracts and business trip applications are part of the ECM solution, and we have found that the automated system experience truly gives our employees a fully digital sytem that offers compliance, efficiency, cost control and waste reduction.
While paper is still useful and an entirely paperless office is not always feasible, the trend is for complex and multitudinous information to be obtained at the click of a button. This information is seen as an asset – consistent, reliable, useful and available. It also facilitates regulatory compliance, such as PoPI and GDPR, with failsafe security and auditing features, and integrates with everyday business applications, giving structure to unstructured data, ultimately ensuring that more informed decisions can be made.
Through the process of practicing what we preach, we were able to get rid of 1.7 tonnes of shredded paper that has been digitalised and in our ECM system. This amount of paper is the equivalent of 24 x 40 feet tall trees. Also, because of reducing our paper storage we were able to remove 4 x large sets of filing cabinets and create more space around the office.
It is easy to see how ECM eliminates many of the obstacles created by paper such as labour-intensive duplication procedures, slow distribution, misplaced originals and the inconvenience of retrieving files from off-site storage.
We’re enjoying ‘drinking our own champagne’ and find it makes it so much easier to sell the solutions when we can talk from experience. Some channel partners have done the same and have seen successes in their client base.
We look forward to walking this digital transformation journey with you, our partners.
Watch out for the September issue of Brainstorm, where our digital transformation strategy is highlighted.
Werner Engelbrecht - General Manager - KYOCERA Document Solutions South Africa
