LEGAL AND FINANCIAL SECTOR
Helping to achieve change The legal and financial sectors continue to rely on print, but their needs are changing – including a move more towards digitalisation – and resellers have a vital role in helping businesses to achieve the changes they are looking for.
The legal and financial sectors have long relied on print, more so than many other sectors. For instance, they often print and mail important documents and keep physical records, usually for legal and security reasons. But, as with many other sectors, this reliance on print is changing with the increasing digitalisation of businesses and it is something that resellers must be alive to. “Print has and will continue to be important to existing processes across the financial and legal sectors, however there is still a decline in volumes,” says Kerry Rush, product marketing manager at Sharp UK. “Although both sectors may never be truly paperless, the adoption of paper-lite processes are more common and continue to grow. “It could be suggested that both sectors continued reliance on paper and print stems from caution around IT and cloud security. In fact, our recent research with IT decision makers across UK SME’s, uncovered that 66% of decision makers in finance and 88% in legal sectors lack confidence in their businesses ability to deal with IT security risks. “We are also still seeing mono and colour print used heavily throughout the sectors due to requirements for paper-based documentation, which is compounded by the
Kerry Rush product marketing manager
extended lifecycle and storage of documents in both sectors.”
Move to digitise But that caution around digital and IT security is waning and there is now more of a move to digital technologies by legal and financial businesses, which provides opportunities to sell. “Alongside this there are greater requirements for the integration of digital workflows, meaning we can introduce cloud- based document management software, which enable workflow automation and document routing,” says Kerry. “This shift is mainly due to the fortification of post- pandemic hybrid working and the cost of real estate being at a premium. Across almost all sectors, there is now a permanent desire to keep information secure, while accessing it from anywhere and preventing valuable space being taken up with paper archives. “Albeit there is a balance to strike between digital and print in these sectors. This is because our recent research uncovered that 28% of financial and 38% of legal IT decision makers cited software and systems being too complicated as a barrier to their businesses making the most of IT investments. “With the rise of AI and Microsoft Copilot there is a buzz around digitalisation and automation,” she says. “Our clients are more aware than ever that they need to be implementing new technologies alongside existing print. Document management software is the perfect introduction into
sharp.co.uk
34
Powered by FlippingBook