New SME Market Research Reveals Manufacturing Leaders’ Priorities in the Next Investment of Digital Transformation
In today’s fast-paced business landscape, efficient information management is paramount. ECM systems play a pivotal role in streamlining document storage, retrieval, and collaboration. This survey aimed to uncover insights from professionals across various industries, shedding light on the current business operational trends. This report looks at those results and contributes to an understanding of how ECM systems can impact enterprise operations and the evolving needs of organizations.
Laserfiche contracted SME and Mercury Research LLC to conduct an independent 3rd party study focusing on the manufacturing industry, specifically surveying over 300 professionals employed with organizations with 101 or more employees and $10M or more in annual revenue. The sample selection was taken from an independent online panel between July 12 – August 3, 2023.
Key takeaways
- Although only 15% of respondents currently utilize an ECM, another 17% indicate that an ECM is on their roadmap for future process integration.
- Three-in-five respondents (60%) indicated that the primary organizational need driving their interest in process integration is for increased operational efficiency.
- Increasing overall process effectiveness and enabling data-driven decision making are the top priorities for organizations’ process integration/ digitization journeys. Increased data accuracy is a top business challenge their organizations are looking to resolve.
- Two-thirds of respondents indicated that cybersecurity is a top priority and key concern over the next 1-3 years.
- AI, cloud computing, document/records management and cloud integrations are the most common processes organizations are planning to implement or are currently being implemented.
Current system utilization
Almost all respondents (97%) indicated that their organization is using at least one automation system, with the average being between 4-5 systems Less than one-in-five respondents is currently utilizing an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system.
Enterprise Content Management (ECM) systems can streamline operations between the increasing number of systems manufacturers use by creating a single source of truth for production, from the production floor to the back-office.
Number of Systems Utilized by Industry
With only 20-30% of organizations’ current processes automated, Enterprise Content Management (ECM) systems can improve administrative work and workflows through the digitization of various paper documents and integrating them within core applications used throughout the organization.
Percentage of Operations Completely Automated
With most of factory floor operations still being completed manual, repetitive document processing is a significant waste of time (and thus unnecessary money is being spent). This creates silos and unstandardized records structures for organizations.
Want to learn more?
Download the whitepaper, “New SME Market Research Reveals Manufacturing Leaders’ Priorities in the Next Investment of Digital Transformation.”
