In the last five years, the volume of paper documents that business organizations need to process has increased more than ten times. This means that enterprises will have to incur more costs in handling paper which in turn will reduce the profit margin. There is no doubt that digitizing the paper assets with the support of document scanning and imaging services is the best solution in this scenario. Studies in this direction point out that when there is huge volume conversion involved, data conversion outsourcing would be more practical because it is quicker, time-saving and more affordable. Organizations that have a small, steady flow of documents could consider doing the scanning and indexing processes in-house, incorporating the same into the routine workflow. Digitization improves the workflow and also increases the efficiency of the employees in the organization and it also serves as the perfect bridge between the paper and the digital world.
Increasing Market Opportunity for Document Imaging
It is estimated that the marketing opportunity for document imaging is poised to grow considerably in the coming years. In any organization, a document imaging solution would be part of the overall enterprise content management or ECM. According to the Radicati Group, the ECM market revenue will grow from $5.1 billion in 2013 to $9.3 billion by 2017. The Gartner Magic Quadrant report on the ECM market finds that by 2016 content management will be personalized and by the year 2017 almost half of all business content is likely to be digitized with companies investing more in analytics as a part of content management. In this study, document imaging is weighed at 15% of the ECM, document management at 20%, records management at 10%, web content management at 5%, social content at 15%, content workflow at 20% and extended components at 15%.
The factors that drive increased use of document imaging solutions are as follows:
- New opportunities with mobile data capture: Today almost all workers use laptops, tablets and smartphones to increase productivity and many people use handheld devices for accessing data. Hence image capturing is becoming more critical and it is important to manage and process them efficiently. Mobile devices have to be managed as an extension of the enterprise to include integration, authentication and security of mobile data and thus mobile imaging presents new market opportunity.
- Increased demand for document imaging with big data: Big data is a booming market and by 2017 it will grow at a 27% CAGR reaching $32.4 billion, as per IDC research statistics. With enterprises looking to bring new data sources into big data analytics, the market for document imaging is bound to grow.
- The“cloud” trend will act as a catalyst: Now, many businesses store their data in the cloud especially because it enables storage of a large amount of data and speed up workflows. Document imaging requirements will increase naturally with organizations spending more on cloud resources – this investment is projected to grow at a CAGR of 36%, reaching $19.5 billion by 2016.
In any business sector, it is very likely that paper processes will continue to exist. The requirement for document scanning and indexing will also continue to exist. It is only natural therefore that the market for document imaging solutions will also increase at a steady pace.
