Survey: More than half of enterprise decision makers to acquire automated document delivery solutions within six months
Madison, WI — December 8, 2004 — Esker, a provider of automated business document delivery solutions and services, announced the findings of a survey it commissioned Amplitude Research to conduct in November 2004 of 100 information technology (IT) decision makers at enterprises with annual revenue ranging from $50 million to more than $1 billion.
According to the survey results, 97 percent of enterprises are either officially or unofficially employing software solutions to reduce the amount of paper used in enterprise business processes, with 81 percent noting that they intend to review or enhance their automated document delivery solutions within the next 18 months, and 51 percent within 6 months.
The survey commissioned by Esker was conducted from November 8 to November 12, 2004 with large enterprise organizations. According to Amplitude Research CEO Steve Birnkrant, 76 percent of the respondents had a title of director, department head or higher within the field of Information Technology, with 25 percent of the respondents acting as a chief information officer or chief technology officer for their enterprise.
Said Birnkrant, We found that about 50 percent of the survey respondents indicate their organization has an official policy to reduce the amount of paper used. This was consistent across all sizes of organizations taking part in this study, regardless of revenue size. We also found that organizations with an official paper reduction policy in place are more likely to use and aggressively promote the use of automated document delivery solutions throughout their enterprise.
Of the survey respondents, 88 percent said they send faxes manually to partners or suppliers, with 83 percent expressing concern about challenges in confirming that faxes to partners or suppliers are read; 43 percent said they are very concerned. Not all automated document delivery solutions in the marketplace have the capability of automating fax delivery and confirming the right person at the other end has read the document, said Mitch Baxter, executive vice president at Esker, commenting on the survey findings.
The survey respondents also expressed a need to review or enhance the readability/integration of documents resulting from existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications, with 81 percent noting that they plan to review their existing automated document delivery solution or deploy additional solutions in the next 18 months; 47 percent said they had plans to review automated document delivery solutions in the next six months.
