The Indian digital document solutions market is on the rise.

Indian organisations intend to increase their investment in these capabilities by 25% over the next 12 months, reveals the findings of a recent study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Adobe.

Businesses are increasing dependencies on and are opting for digitised document workflows. According to the respondents, this can help organisations in improving collaboration (68%), strengthening data security and compliance (60%), and increasing revenue (58%).

The study titled ‘The Trust Imperative: How Indian Organizations Should Build a Secure Foundation with Digital Document Processes’ saw participation of 150 business decision makers across Australia-New Zealand, Singapore, and India.

While digital document processes are supporting government agencies and businesses in enabling the future of work, the study also highlights that these result in improvement in sales revenue, employee collaboration, and data security.

“The transition to the hybrid workplace will have to find foundation on solid digital transformation strategies involving digital documentation, cloud-based solutions for document management and automation at work for streamlined collaboration. We believe this research shows that organisations with digital document processes in place are better equipped to operate in a hybrid environment and are 10 times less susceptible to risk losing customers,” said Girish Balachandran, head of digital media business, Adobe India.

Digital document processes to further India’s digital transformation

Business leaders have identified that digital document processes are a business necessity today, and

Indian organisations will continue to increase their investments in these capabilities to innovate, improve document access and mobility, increase data security, and deliver superior experience.

Poor e-signature user experience on small mobile devices, and inability to better access to e-signature applications on mobile devices are the pain points organisations want to solve.

Similarly, decision-makers are taking a holistic approach to document processes to deliver superior customer experience. Seven in every 10 business decision makers are planning to expand their use of customer-facing technologies and interfaces, while five in every 10 are planning to do the same for digital documents and tools such as e-signatures.

Given the proven track record to digital documents in enhancing innovation, security, and collaboration; a greater number of organisations to accelerate the process to ensure enterprise-grade security compliance.

Underutilising digital document processes putting organisations at risk

Organisations in India even today continue to rely on a mix of paper-based and digital processes. Only two out of 10 Indian business leaders have their organisations fully digitised and are reaping the benefits of an end-to-end digital document process.

The use of e-signatures in Indian organisations prior to the pandemic was only 18% and has now more than doubled. This is particularly true for the back-end functions of an organisation such as legal and procurement departments – which heavily rely on paper-based document processes with only 16% and 18% respectively digitised.

Prioritising ‘Trust’ with digitising document processes

Indian organisations have observed that while adopting new digital services, the preservation of customer trust is a priority.

The respondents in the survey believed digitising document workflows helped ensure data security and compliance (60%); improved data information, and documents tracking and traceability (66%); and reduced fraud risks with a better audit trail (60%).

This has impacted both internal and external stakeholders especially the employees and customers. Digitising document workflows enabled a hybrid working environment (66%) and improved collaboration (68%) at their organisations.

On the other hand, with an aim to deliver unparalleled customer experience, digitising document processes helped organisations to maintain and/or increase revenue (58%) and pursue opportunities and gain new customers (48%) in their organisation.

“It is interesting to note that 62% of the decision-makers reported that organisations have difficulties maintaining data security and confidentiality when using paper-based processes while 22% reported having difficulties achieving compliance with retention policies. The need of the hour is for Indian organisations to adapt to new ways of accessing and consuming content and leveraging the available tools and solutions at hand- such as the digital document workflows,” says Balachandran.