Paper disappears

At the beginning of the pandemic a year ago, 27 percent still said they were unclear about the benefits; two years ago, the figure was as high as 34 percent. These are the results of a representative survey of more than 500 companies from all sectors commissioned by the digital association Bitkom.

"Corona has led to a digitization push in people's minds. Now we must succeed in driving digitization forward in practice as well", says Bitkom president Achim Berg. "Those who position themselves digitally will not only be better able to weather times of crisis, but will also benefit from this in a post-lockdown period."The current study shows that digital office solutions have reached the breadth of companies, but there is still a lot of potential in the use of individual applications.

Thus, 93 percent say they use individual solutions such as CRM, ECM or ERP, and another four percent are planning or discussing their use. However, only 48 percent use digital solutions to digitize documents, 44 percent use workflow management for approval processes, for example, and 41 percent use electronic archiving and document management.

Output management, for example, is used by 35 percent to generate documents, 27 percent have introduced digital solutions for cross-departmental research of company information, and 21 percent use digital signatures.

During the corona pandemic, many companies are saying goodbye to paper. In 62 percent of companies, fewer documents are printed out than a year ago, and only eight percent have more. In 40 percent of companies, paperless and paper-based processes are more or less in balance.

"Digital processes in procurement, for example, but also in vacation requests or sick leave are, among other things, the prerequisite for successful work in the home office, which has gained massive importance in the pandemic," says Berg. "On the other hand, digital processes are the basis for being able to use technologies such as artificial intelligence or cloud services."