We’ve published a very wide range of Content and Document Management think-pieces this year on thedmcollaborators, as well as some great case studies and round-ups of the best of US and UK press coverage of important developments and reporting in the field of HR automation.

As 2020 comes to a close and we all get ready for some welcome downtime before a fresh business start in 2021, let’s take a second to look back at some of the most well-received articles we shared and that the community was kind enough to give us great feedback on.

March

A number of reports had come out that last pre-COVID month on the important issue of HR automation, but we called attention in particular to the fact that HR functions that aren’t moving at the speed current business dictates could be letting their organisations down. This is never through lack of commitment, we cited in our look into this, but by being bogged down in the paperwork: “For many HR departments, all the benefits questions, time-off requests, hiring tasks, and more leave barely enough time to breathe–let alone think about strategy.” As we pointed out in one of our many round-ups of this important debate over the year, given that automated employee self-service and automated reporting (e.g. on key metrics like turnover, headcount, time-to-hire, employee satisfaction, and more) is all there for the taking, it’s surprising we’re not seeing all this more widely adopted. The article also shows that there is no reason whatsoever that digitalisation should only be for the largest organisations, either. Will 2021 finally end this situation? We certainly hope so!

Again in March, we were delighted to be able to raise a glass to our site’s main sponsor and supporter, EASY Software, as it celebrated an amazing three decades of achievement and contribution to the global take up of paperless, efficient ways of working. Hey, one for the pub quizzers among you… what does EASY actually stand for? Read the article to find out 🙂

April

We were grateful to share a fair few customer success stories with Document Management approaches this year, but maybe if we had to pick one fave, this would be it. In How Saga Group is Harnessing Document Management Power To Instantly React To Customers, we had the chance to share how the Group, famous for providing holidays and insurance products tailored to the over-50s, had benefited from exploitation of EASY ARCHIVE. There, we heard directly from the company’s Customer Data Quality Assurance & Capture Systems Manager how, in her words, her compliance targets were being met (“Having everything available electronically means people anywhere can find it quickly, nothing gets lost, and we’re not at risk of breaching confidentiality”) but also how a hybrid paper-electronic approach to customer feedback was also giving great value back to the company. The story’s a great reminder that it’s only ever really about customer success, and that’s really what all our efforts as a DM community have to be focused on.

May

In a summary of significant cross-UK and Germany research, we summarised the key findings of a deep dive by EASY researchers into the interesting field of experience management. In UK PLC: Doing a Lot Better with Experience Management Than You Thought?, for instance, we found out that the majority of UK firms were successfully collecting experience data from their stakeholders, in particular employees – but that Brexit and this strange new COVID-19 thing were also being defined as major challenges. EASY’s data also showed how experience data means businesses can interact better with customers, employees and partners (84%) while applying experience data to optimise operations was identified as a KPI by a similarly high proportion (82%). The same study also uncovered the fact that for UK firms, experience management is a well understood and utilised concept, despite regulatory challenges, and digitisation is firmly under way despite budgetary constraints. As EASY’s UK CEO Andy Boulton pointed out for us, “To keep the digitisation and experience momentum accelerating, some radical process overhaul and technology spend needs to be set in motion.” Let’s hope he’s right.

October

Thinking like a startup is a lot more than just putting table football in the office

And finally, for many attendees, a big highlight of EASY Software’s successful first ever virtual only EASY World 2020 global customer event was this great chat from famed German entrepreneur, business author and speaker Tijen Onaran. A well-known advocate of women in business, Tijen shared many insights about ‘People. Courage. Making,’ of which maybe our favourite was her observation on the critical importance of diversity in business: “Only having people who look exactly like you and have exactly the same opinion as you doesn’t get you anywhere anymore. Now, it’s crucial to have a diverse team with different genders, different backgrounds, different dimensions; you have to have different competencies around the table and different talents… next time you meet someone who looks different, look for a dialogue, talk to this person. It’s really worth it!”

So just a few of the many great posts it was our privilege to put up for you in 2020. We wish all our readers and the many stakeholders we strive to serve in the UK Document Management community a Merry Christmas, a Peaceful New Year–and see you on the other side!

thedmcollaborators editor