We are talking (in numbers and percentages) about the digitization of Romanian businesses, the use of electronic documents and their benefits, starting from the data collected in the "Electronic Signature – the Gateway to Digitization" case study, conducted by IDC with the support of certSIGN, which analyzes the impact of digitization on the private business environment and identifies the main technologies for a digital business.
In short, about the digitization of Romanian businesses
Although with an initially slow adoption rate, a growing number of cloud-based, mobile and analytical technologies are finding their way into the Romanian business environment, while solution vendors and buyers are aligning with a digitally managed vision.
However, the embrace of digital technology by Romanian companies is among the lowest in Europe. They rank 24th (out of 28) for electronic information sharing and the use of electronic invoicing, 26th for the implementation of cloud technologies and 27th for the proportion of SMEs selling online.
From electronic signature to digital documents and digitization
It is easy to understand why the digitization of documents (the transition from paper to electronic) is at the root of the digital transformation – in a knowledge-based society, we all work with information and visualize, process and communicate it through documents, be they in the form of e-mail, chat or paper, under reports, purchase orders and contracts.
According to an IDC survey of office printing and digitization trends, on average, almost 60% of processes were paper-based in 2018, while the same organizations expected to have almost 50% of processes in electronic form in 2019.
The benefits of digital documents and processes
Organizations benefit from digital documents and processes in many ways, and the reasons relate not only to cost savings, as 47% of Romanian organizations said in an IDC survey.
The most important benefit was observed in improved employee productivity through fast access to information and less manual / redundant work (as stated by 55% of respondents), faster processes and improved operational efficiency (54% of respondents) and improved customer experience due to faster response time and multichannel communication (47% of respondents).
The other benefits cited by survey respondents were increased innovation due to the development of new products and services and IT-based business models (41%) and the opportunity to take advantage of new laws and regulations related to electronic identification and reliable services for electronic transactions (39%).