Digitisation is usually framed as a technology decision: pick a platform, configure it, go live. In practice, the platform is rarely the hard part. The hard part is the state of the information you are trying to digitise, and most of the readiness problems that derail a project are visible long before anyone signs a software contract – if you know what to look for.
Here are seven signs that the foundations need work first. None of them is fatal. Each is fixable. But each one digitised without being addressed simply carries the problem into the new system, where it costs more to put right.
1. There’s no single source of truth
If three departments hold three versions of the same customer record, you do not have a record – you have a disagreement. This is the most common readiness gap and the most quietly expensive. AIIM’s research found that most content systems are not connected to other lines-of-business systems, with only around a quarter of document, content and records management systems integrating with core applications[1]. Digitising on top of that fragmentation does not unify it; it just gives each silo a faster way to disagree.
2. You’re still dependent on paper for core processes
Paper is not merely old-fashioned – it is unsearchable, hard to audit and impossible to feed into a digital workflow without conversion first. Research by Deep Analysis, M-Files and AIIM found that over 45% of business processes remain paper-based on average[2]. If a meaningful share of your core records exists only on paper, that paper is the first dependency in the project, not a detail to clear up later.
3. Finding a document takes too long
A simple test: how long does it take someone to retrieve a specific record on request? If the honest answer is measured in hours or days, the underlying information is not organised well enough to digitise cleanly. McKinsey Global Institute analysis found that interaction workers spend nearly 20% of the working week searching for internal information or tracking down colleagues who can help[3] – and that figure describes organisations whose information is at least nominally digital.
4. You still re-key data by hand
Manual re-keying is both a productivity drain and a quality risk, and it is a reliable signal that processes have not been designed around structured data. Peer-reviewed research puts typical manual data-entry error rates in the 1 to 4% range, with complex or pressured conditions pushing them higher[4]. An error rate that sounds trivial becomes serious at scale: a few percent of a large records set is thousands of wrong fields, each one waiting to surface in an audit or a customer dispute.
5. Your records are full of duplicates and contradictions
Duplicate, incomplete and conflicting records are the raw material of a failed digitisation, because the new system inherits every defect and makes some of them harder to trace. Gartner’s research puts the cost of poor data quality at an average of $12.9 million per organisation per year[5]. That is the cost of living with the problem. Digitising without cleansing first does not remove it – it migrates it.
6. You have no enforced retention schedule
Knowing what you hold is only half the picture; knowing what you should no longer hold is the other half. AIIM research found that around half of organisational data is more than five years old and likely to contain redundant, obsolete or trivial material, yet only half of organisations actively enforce a retention policy[6]. For a regulated organisation, digitising without a retention review converts a paper liability into a digital one – non-compliant records that are now easier to find and harder to defend.
7. No one actually owns the data
Ask who is accountable for the accuracy and lifecycle of a given record set. If the answer is a shrug, or “IT, probably”, governance is the missing foundation – and governance failures are where transformation budgets disappear. Grant Thornton’s audit of Birmingham City Council’s Oracle programme identified critical failures in governance, technical oversight and vendor management, with the volume and quality of migrated data forcing extensive retesting[7]. A project originally budgeted at around £19 million is now set to cost £144.4 million[8]. Clear ownership is what stops the smaller version of that story happening to you.
Readiness is the project before the project
If several of these signs are familiar, the answer is not to abandon digitisation – it is to sequence it properly. The unglamorous work of consolidating sources, digitising paper, cleansing records and applying retention discipline is what every successful programme quietly depends on. It is cheaper to do first than to retrofit, and it is the difference between a system that delivers and one that simply automates the existing mess.
How Dajon helps
Dajon does the readiness work that makes digitisation succeed: digitising paper archives, consolidating fragmented records into a single accessible source, cleansing and structuring data, and applying retention discipline – with the compliance obligations of regulated sectors built in throughout. If any of the seven signs above feel close to home, talk to us about getting the foundations right before you build on them.
References
- 2023 State of the Intelligent Information Management Industry AIIM[↩]
- 45% of Business Processes are Paper Based Deep Analysis[↩]
- The Social Economy: Unlocking Value and Productivity Through Social Technologies McKinsey Global Institute[↩]
- Entering Data Correctly: An Empirical Evaluation of the Theory of Planned Behaviour in Manual Data Acquisition ScienceDirect[↩]
- Data Quality: Why It Matters and How to Achieve It Gartner[↩]
- New Study Reveals Crucial Role of Information Management in AI Success AIIM[↩]
- How Birmingham’s $48M Oracle ERP Project Turned into an Epic Failure CIO[↩]
- Birmingham Oracle ERP Fiasco Now £144M and Still Not Working The Register[↩]