


5 benefits of doing more with less (and a great word for Wordfeud or Scrabble):

Do you get overwhelmed with information? This information overload is made even worse by the growth of low-quality information because of easy publication. While I was talking to a customer about it, I was looking for one word that describes a way to address the issue. One word that explains to have technology in place allowing you to do more with less. Could it be ephemeralization? I had to look up the word myself as ephemeralization is not the most commonly used word in the world. It is actually a term by R. Buckminster Fuller, meaning the ability of technological advancement to do ‘more and more with less and less until eventually you can do everything with nothing1.

5 benefits of doing more with less

It got my attention. We should focus on ephemeralization! After practicing how to pronounce the word ephemeralization at least 5 times without mistakes, it got me thinking about 5 benefits of having technology to do more with less:

1. Increased productivity

Make it much easier to find and access relevant information, so professionals can work from home, on the road, or elsewhere. 

2. Cost savings

Reducing storage. Less office storage needed for paper archive and keeping less irrelevant rich information such as video, pictures thus large in size, brings down storage costs.

3. Better business decisions

Individuals should only be exposed to information they can effectively process to make better decisions. If not, it leads to anxiety, stress, and potentially dangerous errors of judgment.

4. Increased customer experience

Today’s customers seek relevant information, personalized, and self-directed. It is obvious that a better customer experience has lots of benefits by itself.

5. Better quality of life

Being able to spend less time-consuming information allows you to spend more time with friends and family and other meaningful things in life.

Technology to the rescue

Information and content are getting more digital than ever before, making it easier to find and use, and therefore, digitization is giving the ability to do more in less time. Another fact, with the proliferation of mobile technology it is easier to create a mobile experience, making it much easier to access information on essentially just one device (instead of many).

So even though digitization and mobile technology contribute to ephemeralization, it still doesn’t address the volume of information and content being made available. Simply put, it is now more important to focus on how much is being created and to look at this process from creation to consume to retention. If not, individuals are still forced to consider more information than they can effectively process. So, information management technology takes care of the volume and relevance to avoid information overload.

A combination that works

Organizations should invest in business process optimization and digital experience technology, together with an information management solution that combines processes, digital information and content, media, correspondence and retention. It will help organizations to achieve its business goals, establish cost-savings and productivity gains; all benefits of ephemeralization – the ability of technological advancement to do more and more with less and less (and a great word for Wordfeud or Scrabble).


Shall we discuss business process optimization, digital experience and information management or start a new game of Wordfeud?

Author: Marc Van Der Zon. You can follow Marc on Twitter (@marcdalsole) or connect with him on LinkedIn

1R. Buckminster Fuller, Nine Chains to the Moon, Anchor Books