In a recent survey on CIO.com on intelligent document processing and document capture, CIOs, IT Management, Operations, Finance and Business Analyst and Security leaders in the Americas and Asia Pacific regions gave us insight into their top use cases and interests. Respondents were mostly from medium to enterprise size Finance/Banking/Accounting and Manufacturing industries, with others in Government and Insurance. 

The most telling information about the state of data and document capture needs was that 61% of respondents said that data compliance prompted their interest in a document capture solution. Responses for invoice processing or starting a digital transformation initiative both resulted in 10%, followed by loan origination at 7%, RPA/BMP and government application processing both at 5% and customer/patient/student/employee onboarding or mailroom automation both at 1%.

Why is data compliance at the top of most IT, operations and finance leaders priorities? 

Data compliance is the practice of ensuring that organizations follow regulations to ensure the sensitive digital assets (data) it possesses are organized, stored and managed so that they are guarded against loss, corruption, theft and misuse. Data compliance often goes hand-in-hand with data security and privacy. With government regulations, such as GDPR, HIPAA, Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) and CCPA, companies must be prepared and not only know and understand their data but treat it responsibly. 

With the recent and unexpected COVID-19 crisis, contact tracing became an important data compliance and data privacy topic for IT and business leaders. McKinsey makes an interesting point in their article on the the topic: 

“A few principles advanced in the GDPR are important in this respect. The regulation requires ‘data minimization’ and ‘purpose limitation.’ These two guidelines specify that as little personal data as necessary should be used and for a specific, narrow purpose only—in this case, to limit the spread of the virus and protect employees’ health. Transparency is also required, meaning that affected individuals must be informed about the usage of their data in simple, clear language. A further principle is protection: data must be sufficiently protected both technically against cyber risk and organizationally against unauthorized sharing.”

This example of the pandemic and GDPR helps explain why leaders should be concerned about their data and why organizations should be considering intelligent document processing (IDP) solutions. In any future scenario, both governments and businesses will need IDP to quickly and proactively meet data compliance requirements. Additionally, once data is captured, classified and extracted, it can be used for decision-making and insights to further help grow their business. Customers expect and demand transparency about their data is handled, which can build trust and confidence with the company they are doing business with. 

With all of these reasons and more, the survey findings can be used to help guide your next digital transformation initiative as it revolves around documents, data capture, data extraction and data compliance as well as learning what other leaders have on their minds. 

For more information on how to achieve data compliance with your documents, please contact Ephesoft about its leading intelligent document processing automation solutions.