European Companies Pay the Price for Poor Document Processes

Our new survey reveals how frustrated employees feel about inefficient processes, indicating that electronic signatures, mobile apps and other technologies are key to providing a better way.

It’s without question that office administration is a crucial part of business activity across Europe. Companies would fail to operate properly without tasks such as raising POs, creating invoices or signing documents.

However, it has been found that this kind of office activity is draining European employees’ time and business productivity, resulting in low morale, lost contracts, cancelled projects and a poor experience for both company employees and customers alike. We discovered in our survey of 7,000 European office employees, that professionals across Europe are spending almost one day a week (a staggering 6.8 hours) on office administration, such as filling out forms, printing documents, and chasing people for signatures.

The research shows that business productivity is taking a significant hit with almost half of European employees (48%) reporting that they have lost a contract all together due to office tasks going wrong, and one in three (33%) have been forced to cancel a project due to the same problem. This highlights a significant area of concern for businesses—but also a great opportunity to find a better way!

Document Drain

We found that seemingly simple office tasks, such as printing and emailing documents, are the biggest time culprits (96%), while 75% of employees say the processes around printing and emailing documents are boring, time-consuming or challenging.

The answers also revealed that despite workers across Europe spending so much time on admin, these tasks rarely go to plan with one in three office admin tasks, such as following up on documents and chasing people for signatures, taking longer to complete than expected.

There’s a Better Way to Move Business Forward

The survey illustrates a shift in how people work and live. Modern professionals seek the freedom to work wherever and whenever they want and Document Drain found that many workers feel tied to the office. Their answers also unveiled the huge opportunity that businesses have to digitally transform office admin and curb much of the frustration in companies today.

According to their feedback, electronic signatures are a key opportunity in transforming the European office—with 74% of employees seeing them as a valuable innovation in the workplace. Using electronic signatures means that in a matter of clicks the entire process of printing, preparing, signing and receiving documents is reduced significantly—giving back valuable time to office workers and businesses.

Mobile apps were also recognised as an important innovation. Almost half of employees across France (49%), UK (45%) and Germany (44%) said mobile apps would be critical to solving document problems, highlighting a huge business opportunity to implement smarter document technology and efficient, digital solutions.

These findings should be a big wake-up call for businesses and help them to reimagine their administrative processes through apps, digital documents, and other technologies. They can save valuable employee time, improve employee satisfaction and morale. This is such a great opportunity to transform the experience for employees and customers alike and invest in the future growth and success of your company.