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SOFTWARE
Much has been written about the
UK’s worryingly low productivity
levels. Adding grist to the mill is
a new survey from Nuance, which
shows that when it comes to
investment in office productivity
solutions, small and medium-sized
businesses in the UK are lagging
behind their counterparts in
Germany and France.
A new study by the speech
recognition and document
management company,
Better
technology, greater efficiency
, shows
that the adoption of both PDF and
speech recognition technologies is
significantly higher on the continent
than over here.
The proportion of businesses with
fewer than 50 employees that use
PDF technology is 92% in Germany,
86% in France and just 71% in the
UK. The respective figures for speech
recognition solutions are 14%, 6%
and 4%.
Perhaps as a result, the proportion
of SMBs that spend more than five
hours a day working on text-based
documents is significantly higher in
the UK than in Germany and France
(14%, 10% and 9% respectively).
Limited use
Although the take-up of PDF
software appears to be high, Steven
Steenhaut, Senior Director of
Marketing EMEA, Global Marketing at
Nuance Communications, warns that
many businesses will be using only
the most basic functionality.
“A lot of people have PDF
software, but we have to be careful
what that means,” he said. “There is
a strong likelihood that many will only
have a PDF reader installed, which
allows them to open the PDF but not
to edit or convert it.”
Low awareness of PDF features is
partly the result of familiar problems
faced by SMEs, including not having
the time (41%) or money (52%) to
learn about and invest in appropriate
technology. In addition, almost one
third (32%) of respondents only
review their software requirements
every year or more.
Steenhaut adds that the software
industry itself is also partly to blame
for poor PDF implementation. “We
as an industry are doing a lousy
job of explaining the advantages of
PDF or at least educating people
in how to make the best use of this
investment,” he said.
Wasted time
Four out of five SMEs surveyed
believe that their business could be
made more efficient in certain areas,
including the management, creation
and editing of text documents.
In fact, almost twice as many
respondents believe they waste time
working on documents as complain
about time wasted travelling to
meetings (13% compared to 7%).
“SMBs state that they are
losing a lot of time working with
documents, losing documents,
having to re-create documents and
managing the communication flow in
business. Some even state they are
losing much more time managing
documents than, for example,
travelling to meetings, which is a
surprise. You would think it would be
the other way round,” said Steenhaut.
Streamlining processes
So how can PDF software help SMBs
improve their document processes?
“PDF software can help
streamline the document flow in
companies in terms of security and
ease of use,” said Steenhaut. “For
example, when you receive a form,
using PDF software you can edit it
and immediately fill in the form on
your PC instead of having to print out
the document, fill it in by hand and
then scan it in again.”
He adds that PDF software also
brings big benefits to document filing
and retrieval. “We have a case study
of a legal company that switched
from filing paper documents in metal
cabinets and started using PDFs
to store documents electronically
instead. This allowed them to get
rid of all their paper storage, which
freed up a lot of office space – and
at the time they were short of office
space. They saved £60,000 by
doing that. Secondly, because PDFs
are searchable, based on indexing
keywords in the document, they are
easier to retrieve. Last but not least,
PDFs can be made completely secure
through encryption software,” he said.
Voice processing
Another Nuance solution that can
help SMBs save time when dealing
with documents is Dragon Naturally
Speaking speech recognition
software.
“The reasons are three-fold,”
explains Steenhaut. “First, it’s three
times faster to speak than type –
even if you are a good typist; second,
by definition you are not making any
spelling mistakes; and third, speech
recognition also allows you to stay
productive when you are mobile
or on the road through the use of
dictation devices like an iPhone or
digital recorder.”
He added: “The typical markets
where speech recognition is already
well embedded, namely the legal or
healthcare sectors, have seen their
revenue increase in an important
way thanks to speech recognition, as
it gives them more time to do other
things e.g. cold calling to find new
customers or additional marketing
activities. It frees up time that can be
invested in other activities.”
For time-starved SMBs any
technology that can improve
productivity is worth a closer look.
New survey highlights productivity failings of UK SMEs
Time to invest?
Steven Steenhaut,
Senior Director of
Marketing EMEA,
Global Marketing,
Nuance
Communications
We as an
industry
are doing a
lousy job of
explaining
the
advantages
of PDF...
