In today’s data-driven world, managing specification data in legacy systems like spreadsheets and shared drives is no longer sustainable. These outdated methods were not built with the capabilities that your company needs today, leading to inefficiencies, inaccuracies, and scalability issues that can hinder your business from meeting customer demands or navigating complex supply chain challenges.
So, how do you prevent your business from being held back by your own data systems?
The answer is with digitized data.
The Pain of Traditional Data Collection
Legacy systems, spreadsheets, and shared drives may seem like convenient solutions for data management, but they often create more problems than they solve. Static data systems can result in a lack of real-time accessibility and reportability around your data, are very prone to error when needing to upload data manually, lead to inefficiencies when trying to conduct audits, recalls, or keep up with regulations like EPR, and overall are simply not scalable. As your company continues to grow and evolve, it is important that your technology does too.
Additionally, many internal employees are being tasked with data collection and digitization. Unless you can dedicate a team to sort through, validate, and upload data from various sources and physical documents into one centralized and templated system, this time-consuming undertaking around data collection is large.
According to Specright’s 2023 State of Specification Management Report, nearly half of surveyed companies rely on spreadsheets and shared drives for data storage. However, these methods fail to deliver the actionable insights needed for today’s fast-paced business environment. We’ve seen the misconception where companies believe their data is digitized when it is actually still in spreadsheets and shared drives. While this is technically a digital format, it does not come close to the automated, action based capabilities of a true centralized data system.
Understanding the Journey to Digitization
Digitization is more than just moving data into a digital format—it’s about creating a centralized, dynamic system that can set you up for long term success. Within the digitization process, it is important to understand two key points.
- The Difference Between Reactive and Dynamic Data
Rather than being in a reactive stage where you use an abundance of resources to tackle problems when they come up, a dynamic data stage keeps you in a proactive state that addresses issues before they arise. Dynamic stages allow for better workflows, increased automation, innovation, and efficiency.
- Data Collection is a First and Necessary Step, But Not the Only Step
Data must also be gathered from outside vendors and suppliers, as well as internal teams. This is a time consuming and resource-heavy process that will take a toll on your employees if this job is handed to them. Thus, it’s important to streamline this process by having a designated resource to sift through physical documents and manage data collection.
Specright’s Digitization Solutions
The benefits of digitization are vast, but the process can be overwhelming. These challenges that come with digitization prevent companies from achieving a digitized data state. However, with the help of Specright’s digitization services, Spec Squad and Spec Assist, you can be on your way from a reactive data state to a dynamic one in a blink of an eye.
Here’s a closer look at some of the customizable steps Specright offers for your digitization process:
- Data Collection: Specright continually gathers specifications and documents from internal and vendor sources.
- Data Standardization and Completeness: Newly digitized data must be standardized and complete for Specright templates. Additionally, by checking for data gaps and cleaning up the data, we ensure that everything is working properly in Specright.
- Data Uploading: We take the static data from various types of documents that we’ve collected and upload it into our centralized, digitized system. This upload process is usually done through 3 main data uploading methods, bulk upload, Intelligent Document Processing (IDP), and Out of the Box (OOTB) Integrations and Open AI.
- Data Validation: The validation process helps our teams ensure that they’ve taken supplier input into consideration, gotten rid of duplicate specs, and have the most up to date data. Validated, high quality data allows your company to pull insights from any given data set, create reports, and perform data completeness audits.
- Data Maintenance: We ensure continuous support to update and audit data, ensuring long-term data accuracy.
The Value of Digitization with Specright
Without digitized data, the bottom line is that your team is wasting time. If you are manually uploading and updating specs in your systems without the help of Specright, this can take hundreds of hours away from your projects.
Digitizing your data not only has cost saving and time saving benefits, but it unlocks endless possibilities for your company. Companies with digitized data have seen:
- A reduction in duplicate specs by ~55-65%some text
- Reportability on specs based on defined criteria allows for any spec overlaps to be identified and rectified.
- Improved visibility into newly-uploaded docs by 40-50%some text
- Automated alert and task systems allow teams to define when notifications appear, increasing visibility into newly-added digitized documents.
- Faster preparation of regulatory audits by 20-30%some text
- When audits need to be performed, data is available at the click of a button.
Conclusion
In today's fast-paced, data-driven world, digitizing your specification data is not optional—it’s essential for staying scalable, competitive, and efficient. Companies still relying on static data in legacy systems, spreadsheets, and shared drives face numerous challenges, such as data inaccuracies and inefficiencies, that will hinder growth and prevent your company from reaching its full levels of success. The journey to data digitization may seem daunting, but the benefits are clear: greater accuracy, faster reporting, reduced spec duplication, and improved regulatory compliance.
Specright’s Spec Squad and Spec Assist solutions were designed to address these challenges head-on and support the 5 steps of the digitization journey. By leveraging these tools, not only do you save time and resources, but your company can transition from a reactive state to a proactive state that supports innovation and efficiency. This in turn results in improved customer experiences and increased brand morale.
Now is the time to embrace digital transformation, and Specright is here to make that journey as seamless as possible. Contact us today to get started.
