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Step Involved in Business process optimization and its benefits

Process Optimization is continuously adapting processes that help improve your business succeed. To begin, identify strong and weak processes within the current system. Analyze each process to make sure nothing is missed.

For any business to attain efficiency, the process of business must be properly optimized and upgraded whenever it is crucial for the line of business. The major reason to optimize and upgrade business processes is to achieve the desired results and create a benchmark for the brand amongst the competition.

What is Process Optimization?

The most common goal for process optimization is minimizing cost and maximizing effectiveness, maximizing performance, and the productivity of the process and end output. Process optimization is the implementation of methods or strategies and disciplines to improve specific within the parameters given.

What is Business Process Optimization?

Business Process Optimization is also an of BPM, also known as Business Process Management. Business Process Optimization is generally a practice that is followed to increase organizational efficiency by improving processes. Optimizing our business processes ultimately lead organizations to optimized business goals.

Basically, optimization in businesses might include several things like streamlining business workflow, improving communication, forecasting changes, eliminating crucial areas of errors etc. Managing and Optimizing processes is the most crucial thing which helps companies to attain Digital transformation.

When businesses encounter problems, they must work on the optimization method to solve their problems. There are several methods to start up with business optimization, and there are several methodologies to consider, each providing a unique set of steps and measures to help in increasing productivity and efficiency also optimizing workflow.

There are several composite steps to define the process of optimization for a business:

Step – 1: Identify

This is the most important step, where you must identify the problematic process that has to be optimized and what’s the purpose behind optimizing the process, and what’s the end goal you want to achieve by optimizing the process.

Step – 2: Analyze

The second most crucial part of process optimization is to analyze whether the desired goals are met with the process currently followed. Are there any areas that must be focused on changes, and if there is a waste of resources or power during the optimization, how to handle them? These all are focused on during the analyzing part.

Step – 3: Implement

Once after Identifying the gaps in the current process and developing several test cases for the new process based on business goals, next comes the Implementation. Before implementation, the strengths and weaknesses of the current process are analyzed y thoroughly. After analysis implementation begins and after Implementation, the results are collected, and adjustments are made based on the results to ensure whether it’s working as per the goals set.

Step – 4: Automate and Monitor

In this step, the entire workflow is evaluated, and automation of the process is carried on, reducing the cost, increasing productivity, and establishing a successful process with a minimum margin of error. After automating, next comes the integration part. These steps ensure finding the area of improvement and crucial issues that must be addressed to continue automating properly without error

Basically, monitoring is nothing but taking a detailed look at the process performance and fine-tuning it to meet the desired results which were set.

What are the benefits of Business Process Optimization?

There are several benefits to business process optimization; first and foremost, business process optimization can make your company competitive over time and create a competitive benchmark.

There are several other benefits to business process optimization:

Cost Reduction

When you set to streamline your process, waste or unnecessary efforts are easily identified, which helps us to find out the area of errors, how resources are used in these areas, the effects on productivity due to these issues, and so on. This process helps us to plan and resolve these issues, thereby reducing expenses.

Risk Mitigation

Activity mapping is highly crucial; once your activities are mapped, it becomes easier to standardize processes. This helps us to eliminate mistakes and repetition.

High Efficiency

Business process optimization allows any business to deliver its products and service at maximum efficiency without compromising quality. Because the areas of errors are eradicated, and the process is optimized from end to end to maximize production without sacrificing quality. When we deliver quality that customers seek as service or product providers, it is then we achieve a prominent market position.

Better Overview and Time Management

Due to process optimization, you get an overview of all processes, which aids integration and optimization of business; overall, when operations are optimized, tasks which don’t add value are eliminated.

Better Problem-Solving capabilities.

With an end-to-end view of identified problems, Fixing the areas of mistakes at the source becomes easy, and this reduces investment in resources in finding out areas of a problem instead of resolving them

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Process

Why is ISO 27001 important for your business?

The Pandemic has affected several businesses, depending on their geographical location, industry, and type of industry. But Covid 19 was not the only reason for being unprepared—a sudden adoption of employees working in mass remotely was adopted as the best solution at an uncertain time. It was also a major reason for the closure of many businesses. During this time, cyber security concerns were raised by businesses due to the lack of cyber resilience and cyber security. Businesses had to convert to hybrid models during the Pandemic, and they had concerns about their information assets as they are more crucial and can be subjected to cyber-attacks. That’s when businesses were looking out for ISO 27001 certification.

What is ISO 27001?

It’s an international standard created to serve as a framework for organizations to implement, maintain and enhance their information security management systems (shortly termed iSMS). The framework ensured continued confidentiality, integrity, availability of resources, and legal compliance. ISO 27001 has nearly 114 controls, and 30+ control categories ensuring information on end-to-end business lines is safe and secure from cyber attacks

An information security management system involves legal, physical, and technical controls involved in an organization’s information risk management processes to safeguard them from cyber-attacks ensuring confidentiality and integrity.

Many corporate systems during the Pandemic didn’t have the scalability and readiness to adapt to modern navigation, even though numerous tools were available just for this purpose. Businesses were facing a tough time with making the system productive in a hybrid model, considering cyber resilience, scalability, information assets management etc. That’s where ISO 27001 standards helped businesses.

How is ISO 270001 useful for businesses?

There are several standards like ISO 9001, ISO 27001, Iso 14001, etc, that help us cut down costs, boost productivity, help in reducing cyber risks, and improve the profits of an organization. These standards are built to make businesses stay effective and prepared for any major hurdle.

The initial work on attaining these standards helps businesses understand the areas of risk, and with periodic repetition, this starts to put the process into practice.

ISO 27001 made the working arrangement more flexible, safe, and secure post covid, Those times in the thought of cyber security and secure remote management models for future purposes.

ISO 27001 helped businesses to meet regulatory information security requirements for business data and provided reassurance to customers and suppliers, also ensuring that under this framework and policies followed, the employee and organization’s information is tightly secured and protected.

ISO certifications are powerful tools for attaining business continuity and identifying both internal and external issues that will impact or become a disaster.

The major importance of ISO 27001 in your business:

ISO 27001 protects your business reputation and your business from security threats

It is most apparent that businesses with ISO 27001 certification tend to have frameworks and working models that protect them from data breaches, security, and cyber threats. These companies work on a set of rules and regulations to attain ISO 27001 certification that eventually strengthens the organization across pillars of cyber security and protects their reputation

Helps them with regulatory fines

ISO 27001 helps organizations avoid crucial and costly penalties that affect their capital. These penalties mostly fall under the category of data protection, such as the General Data Protection Regulation, not only with the GDPR helps you in several areas and ensures the best approach is taken towards maintaining Information security.

ISO 27001 helps you comply with GDPR, commonly known as the General Data protection regulation and NIS directive called the Directive on Security of network and information systems. There is always a risk of data breach litigation, ISO 27001 helps to reduce this risk. Getting litigation due to a data breach can damage your business reputation and affect your growth, etc. Many laws are being drafted by the EU and USA in relation to private action and consumer privacy, like California Consumer Privacy Act, Biometric Information privacy act, etc.

Improves your company structure and focus towards growth

Globally, companies tend to adapt to ISO 27001, as growth is crucial in any line of the business, a company cannot tend to lose their focus on their information security.

By attaining ISO 270001, your business can create a highly functional and operational system that is not only flexible but also ensures the security of information assets. To ensure this company must conduct risk assessments and audits annually, which helps them to make necessary changes.

Reducing the frequency of auditing:

As ISO 27001 is a globally accepted certification, it demonstrates its effectiveness in security, therefore rapidly reducing the need for repeated customer auditing.

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Consulting

Why is Automation in Back-office support Essential?

Automation Back Office Support Essential-iBridgeLLC

The Back-Office and is made up of administration and supports professionals who aren’t client-facing. Back-office functions can include several services like Business record management, regulatory compliance, finance settlements, clearances, Accounts management, and IT-related services.

For Example: In core functional areas, the front office might focus on increasing demand and sales, and the back office might focus on helping the company in the manufacturing of products and services.

What is Back-office support?

The back-office department must understand the business from end to end and make decisions based on business objectives. They must ideally value each process and stage that adds value chain.

Explaining it in simple terms. To complete a sale there are several functions from production, shipping, marketing, research, customer support, IT and Service Desk etc must all come together to ensure customer satisfaction. To get to this automation and streamlining of each functional step must occur. streamlined and automated to cost-effectively meet.

Why should companies Automate their back office?

There are several benefits of back-office support but the most critical is to prevent operational errors and identify problems and solve them rapidly.

There are several important areas for back-office support like communication. Identifying communication issues to ensure different departments stay on unified lines to reduce errors and avoid rework, Data analysis and BI can collect data from all the processes carried on and perform deep analysis to find out the contribution on every stage and to identify stages that don’t add value, Standardizing the process making it easier to find the bottleneck in processes carried out and coming up with the best solutions

The back office will have access to information on operations and all functions of your company, to enhance process execution delays, identify the employee responsible for each task, and measure progress on activities assigned. All these steps intend to improve customer satisfaction and process effectiveness

There are several benefits behind successful automation:

Reduce the number of failures

With sequential automation, the number of errors will be reduced before they occur. This will pave the way to continuous improvement and open doors for other functional improvements

Reduce the number of administrative workers

The back-office support holds several documents, business contracts, reports, Invoices, order copies, and more that are highly critical for the success of a business. Managing these documents using automated business record management tools or Enterprise Content Management systems integrated with Business Process Management Systems can reduce the hassles in paperwork, failures in document sharing, document auditing, etc.

Value of Data in real time

Automation also allows us to use the data generated by several processes in real time. It can be extremely valuable for maintaining a competitive advantage and in making business decisions.

A simple example – when customers start returning your products and expressing concerns about the quality or price, this affects the entire inventory cycle, and finances, which might also lead to complaints online and affect the Online Reputation Management of the company.

Advantages of Systems Integration

When you outsource different operations to different companies process tracking is important. That’s when you implement a digital platform that integrates processes related to customers into a single system like Service Desk, Analytics etc. These automated solutions can help us shape the growth of the company.

There are several other major benefits of automating business, but you must understand how process optimization is done to take adequate steps in the optimization of your business. It’s easy to see the benefits of Automation if it’s properly streamlined and optimized. But to ensure that the optimization has been highly effective or not, there must be sequential and proper implementation and planning for the processes.

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Process

How to Find the Right Consulting Firm

Confused about whether to hire a Consulting firm or not? How does a consulting firm benefit your firm? Why has the number of companies offering services to consulting firms risen tremendously in America?

Reasons for a business to hire a consulting firm

The first and foremost reason companies hire a consulting firm is to cut down their investments in technology and contingent resources. One of the major reasons why consultants are hired is for their skillset and their access to modern technology, infrastructure, and cutting-edge tools. These firms provide businesses with expertise, cost-effective setup, and surplus resources which they require.

A recent survey by Clutch states that 44% of small businesses have hired a consultant and 30% are planning to hire an IT consultant for them. And most 70% of small businesses urge to outsource a few of their business process to highly qualified consultants. Start-ups and Small businesses are the best ones who are quick to adopt innovative technology. They majorly hire IT, consultants, to help their business is Business process automation, Digital transformation, and cybersecurity implementation.

Here comes the biggest question!

What do Business consulting firms do for your business?

Consulting services with global business consultants provide a variety of management consulting, process consulting and other services to help organisations of all sizes, resource levels and industry types enhance their work by improving their overall performance and efficiency.

Majorly businesses tend to hire 5 types of consultants like strategy consultants, Management consultants, operations consultants, legal consultants, and Technology/ IT consultants.

There are several factors and processes involved in hiring any type of consulting firm

1. Finding the type of service and firm you need

When it comes to finding the right consulting service, it’s about finding out what’s wrong with your current consultant or what needs he or she can solve. The first step is to be specific about the work you want them to do for you—it may be something as simple as changing the business operation line or as complex as revamping your technology department’s database. It could also involve revising a business plan, providing litigation support for specific needs, or even performing strategic consulting for a future business plan.

Once you understand your goal, the next step is to find out whether your firm has specialists in the field you are looking for. Does it have the resources? Do they have a record of accomplishment of success for what you want? When you go for a general consultant, they offer a wide range of services throughout the company. When you go for a specialised one, he or she tends to be helpful only in one area of business: your own.

While choosing a firm, you should consider the size and experience of the firm, its resources for the field, and its technology to find the right one for your project.

2. Gain clarity over their background

Whether the size of a consulting firm is huge or small, it’s always important to choose the right one to help you achieve your goals. For choosing the right one you must be clear with their competencies, speciality, and services they offer and the competitors for them in the market and the audience they reach in the market. Their market reach also matters to find the right one you are looking for.

3. Establishing the mode of work and communication

Let’s say you hire a strategic consultant for increasing your business performance, but they don’t establish communication with the team and understand the current plan and its flaws in it. Do you think you might get the best strategic solution from them? You never hire consulting firms to get results alone. They must streamline the process in every stage of the process to achieve your business objectives. To understand this, know their methods and ways of communicating with clients.

It’s essential for any consulting firm to value independent thinking and transformational outcomes. You must get to know how they handle the projects, their approach to solving any issue, the tools they utilise to construct solutions, and their preplanning before initiating huge change.

4. Balancing the cost and resource

Did you know that every year in the US, there is a 4.9% increase in businesses seeking out business process outsourcing services? The reason for this is because of an increase in outsourcing projects globally. One survey states that the pricing model of consultancies determines their project conversion rate; however, do not pick a consultancy based on the price alone. A firm which charges high but gets the work done with higher efficiency and on time is the best pick.

5. Evaluate their presence and work culture

Consulting firms tend to highlight their area of expertise, portfolio, their major achievements to show their edge over competitors and their presence and reputation in the industry. Doing an evaluation of their presence across mediums can help you understand their communication with the audience, the feedback from their clients, their networks etc. Another major factor considered is their work culture and model align with yours or not. Identify the areas of concern while working together.

6. Discuss the terms and look for the details

After selecting a company to work with, it’s important to understand their contract and all the details that go along with it. This way you can avoid hidden expenses or delays in the future.

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Consulting

What is a Database Migration?

What is the legacy database migration?

Legacy data is historical data buried in old databases and records, which includes critical information your company needs to run its business. Legacy data is stored for long periods of time – unorganized, isolated, and segmented in various formats. Managing and processing such data becomes cumbersome and useless over time, leading organizations to seriously consider migrating legacy databases to modern environments.

Database migration is the movement of information from an old and often unsupported database environment (DB) to a new, modern environment easily supported.

What are the benefits of a data migration strategy?

Here are the benefits companies derive from migration:

This process ensures comprehensive data integrity
Significantly improved ROI and reduced media and storage costs
Minimal disruption to daily operations with minimal manual intervention
Update underlying applications and services while increasing efficiency and effectiveness
Helps scale resources to meet the growing needs of business datasets
Helps to build a customer base and eliminates obstacles that can hinder customer-company relationships.

What are the kinds of a legacy software migration?

Upgrading systems and moving to the cloud, as an example, presents an opportunity for organizations to increase agility, drive growth, and set business priorities. It also reduces capital expenditures and pushes your applications to an improved and innovative environment.

Here are some terms you might find useful as you think through this topic.

Cloud Migration: It is the process of moving data, applications, and all critical business elements from an on-premises data center to the cloud or from one cloud environment to the next.
Application Migration: Applications are the interface on how everyone leverages the technology you have made. Application migration may require a re-think or re-write of the applications you have developed or licensed. It is the process of moving applications to the cloud often termed application migration.
This includes the migration of application programs (Mobile Apps) to cope with the need of modern environments. You can save entire application systems from your device to the cloud storage.
Storage migration: The migration of legacy systems from legacy arrays to modern storage systems to improve performance and the ability to scale cost-effectively.

A great takeaway and value – database migration automates data synchronization with minimal disruption and disruption. It helps organizations achieve recovery point objectives while maintaining smooth and efficient operations.

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Technology

What Is WCAG, and Why Should It Matter for Your Business?

The importance of accessibility for online content of a business.

If your business deploys digital assets such as websites, portals, apps, and promotions, you should understand why and how to comply with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Commonly called WCAG, these tenets were developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) as the industry standard for digital accessibility for those with disabilities. The group has nearly 440 members and develops standards for computer languages like CSS3 and HTML.

Most accessibility regulations worldwide use WCAG for their policies and laws. These guidelines can be applied across all current and future digital technologies. In simple terms, WCAG aims to keep the entire internet accessible for everyone now and as online communication evolves.

What does WCAG cover?

WCAG establishes web accessibility standards for various functional needs, including updates that facilitate digital access for those who face challenges in these areas:

Levels of WCAG compliance and what it means for a business

WCAG establishes three levels of conformance: A, AA, and AAA, each with different criteria for successful implementation. Level A, with 25 criteria, refers to the lowest level of conformance (minimum), and Level AAA is the highest (maximum) with 61 required criteria.

A represents the minimum accessibility standards digital content should meet to avoid discriminating against audience members with disabilities. Level AA sites, which must meet 35 criteria, are designed for maximum accessibility and meet legal compliance standards. Federal, state, and local government agencies and other public service sites should ideally achieve AAA compliance.

A quick history of WCAG

WCAG was introduced in 1999 to provide guidance around online accessibility for people with mental disabilities, mobility issues that make using a mouse or keyboard challenging, deafness, impaired vision, etc. The most recent major update, WCAG 2.1, came out in June 2018 with 17 new success criteria improving coverage for cognitive disabilities, low vision disabilities, and mobile accessibility.

The next update to the guidelines, WCAG 3.0, is available now as a working draft and will be finalized in 2023. This new version will address the influx of mobile and wearable tech devices and digital voice assistants like Siri and Alexa and cover over 50 functional needs that make it possible for people with disabilities to use the full extent of the internet.

WCAG 3.0 extends to rather than replaces WCAG 2.1, and your company need not change its compliance strategy if your digital content already conforms to WCAG 2.1. For compliance purposes, many government agencies in the U.S. will continue to require adherence to 2.1 or 2.0 rather than adopting 3.0 immediately.

Should your business comply with WCAG?

Certain organizations must conform to WCAG under the Americans With Disabilities Act. This portion of the federal law applies to schools, colleges, universities, health care institutions, financial institutions, and state and local government offices. Organizations in these categories can receive a $75,000 fine for a single ADA violation and $150,000 for subsequent violations.

How Title III of ADA ties into WCAG

Title III of the ADA governs website accessibility. According to the Department of Justice, this part of the act applies not just to physical locations open to the public but also to publicly available digital locations (websites and apps). Under this title, these locations must be accessible to all individuals and groups. In other words, if your company has digital content accessible online, you must comply with accessibility standards.

In addition, Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1998 requires all digital information published by federal agencies to be accessible. Specifically, individuals with disabilities must be able to obtain comparable access to publicly available federal information. Section 508 and Title III have established compliance requirements based on the AA level of WCAG 2.0.

The potential for discrimination claims

Even if your company doesn’t need WCAG conformance according to ADA, you could be subject to a discrimination lawsuit if your business website lacks accessibility for individuals with disabilities. Digital accessibility lawsuits in this category (Title III claims) increased by approximately 50% from 2018 to 2020, according to data published by UsableNet.

Given this information, most organizations aim for mid-range conformance at level AA. This strategy provides meaningful and achievable accessibility goals with limited digital design and development disruption. If your company does not have specific compliance requirements under ADA, either A or AA level compliance can shield you from legal action based on digital discrimination.

What are the benefits of WCAG beyond compliance?

Legal compliance isn’t the only advantage of adding accessible features to your company’s digital content. These are some of the other benefits you can realize with this initiative.

Improved SEO ranking

Many criteria Google uses to rank websites overlap with best practices for digital accessibility. As your company addresses WCAG compliance, you’re also engaging in search engine optimization (SEO). The better your site’s SEO, the more customers you’ll attract to your business through organic searches. Common website updates that boost both SEO and WCAG compliance include:

An organized layout that proceeds logically from one topic to the next
Alternative suggestions provided in response to user input errors
Header code that indicates the site’s language
Audio and video text transcripts and alt tags (and alt tags for images)

Enhanced user experience

Even individuals without disabilities are more likely to consume your online content if they can take advantage of accessibility options. When accessibility improves to address functional needs, the user experience improves for your entire audience. A parent with unaffected hearing might use closed captions when watching a video next to a sleeping child. Audio instructions are more convenient for hands-on instructions, such as trying a new recipe or building furniture.

Bolstered brand image

Accessible online content also elevates the profile and reputation of your brand. Most people want to work with companies that share their values. Pursuing inclusive initiatives such as WCAG compliance illustrates the organization’s commitment to avoiding discrimination and promoting open access.

Expanded reach and revenue

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 61 million Americans live with a disability. This number represents more than a quarter of all U.S. adults. Preventing these individuals from accessing your business website creates a legal and moral issue and limits your potential revenue by automatically leaving out a large portion of your prospective audience.

Checking for WCAG conformance

While complete conformance with the comprehensive WCAG standards represents a challenge for many business owners, taking small initial steps can significantly impact the accessibility of your digital content.

You can start by assessing your website or online assets for basic WCAG components by measuring them against POUR standards (Perceivable, Operable, Understandable & Robust), documenting the gaps identified, and prioritizing the steps to remediate the same. For more details, look up our blog –How can my company achieve and maintain WCAG compliance?.

Digital presence is the new storefront of a business

Don’t wait until the release of WCAG 3.0 to start work on digital accessibility compliance. Most components of the new version remain aligned with WCAG 2.1’s recommendations. These include best practices for audio, podcasts, video, image presentations, forms, digital signatures, focus state, links, navigation, frames, tables, maps, graphs, colors, fonts, layout, infographics, organization, and structure.

Connect with our team of technical & accessibility experts to understand how we can help your business reach and keep conformance with WCAG standards.

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Technology

How can my company achieve and maintain WCAG compliance?

Improve accessibility to your organization’s digital content and chart the steps to ensuring and maintaining WCAG compliance.

Web Accessibility Content Guidelines (WCAG) provide industry-standard digital accessibility benchmarks. The World Wide Web Consortium (WC3) created and continues to update these guidelines so that people with disabilities can read, interpret, and navigate online content. Most global accessibility regulations, including aspects of federal anti-discrimination laws in the US, are derived from WCAG.

The most recent major update in June 2018, WCAG 2.1, introduced 17 new success criteria improving coverage for cognitive disabilities, low vision disabilities, and mobile accessibility. [i] It also includes various levels of compliance for businesses and public organizations. And this blog will guide you on how to get there.

Start with a basic compliance check

You can get a quick idea of how well your company’s digital content adheres to WCAG by answering a few simple questions.

Can users access all the functions of your website with a keyboard as well as with a mouse?
Does all video, audio, and photo content on the site have a text alternative (e.g., transcript or closed captions)?
Does the site have alt-text that assistive devices can interpret and read?

If you can’t answer yes to all three, it’s time to plan for a full accessibility assessment and remediation program to see where you stand and how you can get up to speed.

While complete compliance with these comprehensive standards represents a challenge for many businesses, taking small steps can significantly impact the accessibility of your digital content. So before engaging a specialized team to support you on compliance, start by assessing your digital property – website, app, and other online assets for Level A WCAG components.

Level A WCAG compliance can significantly reduce the risk that your business will face claims of discrimination against people who have disabilities. You can conform to Level A by implementing features that ensure your website meets the so-called POUR principles: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust.

Optimize key components for accessibility

POUR is a framework for digital accessibility. But how does it translate into concrete steps for your web developers? Depending on the extent of your online content, you can prioritize the actions listed to come closer to WGAG conformance at your target level:

Ensure that all content can be converted to text, read by assistive devices, magnified, zoomed, or otherwise altered without changing its meaning
Add subtitles, captions, and audio descriptions to all video content
Implement keyboard operability for all components of the site, including buttons, forms, links, and menus
Use a programming language that supports autofill technology
Choose a palette with a high level of color contrast
Emphasize hyperlinks with cues such as underlining and bold instead of color
Remove autoplay video and audio, as it can be difficult to turn off
Add clear, descriptive content for all internal and external links
Structure the site with clear headings, lists, and bullets
Consider the order of content presentation

Next, rank this list of nonconforming aspects of your site by issue severity and estimated size of the impacted audience. Prioritizing the updates in order of importance results in a strong remediation strategy. Many experts recommend taking a find, fix, monitor approach to making the actual updates and keeping up with remediation.

Whether you have an in-house web team or outsource digital content development, provide the necessary tools and resources to create accessible online assets. Internal stakeholders, including developers, testers, content creators, and staff, should receive periodic accessibility training. It’s essential to stay abreast of the upcoming changes to WCAG to avoid falling out of conformance.

When you use the checklist above to prioritize corrective and point-forward actions related to your organization’s online content, you will have completed the first step in understanding conformance with WCAG guidelines.

Taking the next step

As you and your team work through the checklist toward achieving Level A compliance, you are now better placed to identify an external team you would like to work with for the next level of WCAG compliance. This is a team with the technical depth and accessibility guidelines knowledge to conduct a thorough compliance assessment of your digital assets and support the subsequent remediation effort.

Understanding the POUR standards better

An accessible website should meet the POUR standards established by WCAG, which means all digital content and functions published by your organization should be:

Perceivable: Users must be able to perceive content on the website by hearing, seeing, or touching it. If they cannot use one sense to take in and understand the information, they should be able to use a different one. Plain text tends to be the most flexible format, which makes it the most perceivable way to upload content. You can also improve accessibility by making digital publications available in multiple languages.

For example, adding a descriptive audio transcript to a video makes it perceivable by using either vision or hearing.

Other strategies to improve the perceive-ableness of digital assets include:

Adding alt text to any non-text content you publish online, including audio, video, and static images
Providing alternative content with equivalent information, which must include at a minimum:
- Prerecorded audio and video for time-based media
- Sign language and closed captions for both prerecorded and live audio
- Audio descriptions for prerecorded video
Structuring and sequencing content so assistive devices can interpret it
Adding instructions that do not require sensory descriptions for comprehension
Ensuring users can easily toggle content between portrait and landscape views as needed
Providing visual cues such as graphics and bolding instead of or in addition to color
Using a high-contrast color palette
Offering an accessible mechanism to stop audio and video that auto-plays on your site or altogether discontinuing autoplay features
Allowing users to zoom text size by at least 200% in their browsers without using an assistive device

If you want to work towards Level AA compliance in the Perceivable category, you can ensure each of your site’s pages has more than one access point and provide a visible keyboard focus indicator for each user interface.

Operable: This term refers to the tools your audience uses to access, navigate, and comprehend the content on your website. All your site’s controls and menus should support operability with a keyboard as well as a mouse.

Users must be able to navigate the platform and interface with a keyboard, mouse, voice, switches, or accessible alternative input devices. People with vision impairment often use a keyboard rather than a mouse to get around online. Switches and voice commands assist those with mobility challenges. Every component of the website, from headings to menus to links, should have a clear and labeled purpose. All content should be free of blinking lights or flashing images that could trigger seizures.

Other Level A compliance guidelines for this category include:

Allowing users to adjust the length of timed content
Ensuring that blinking items have no more than three flashes per second
Offering the ability to bypass blocks of content
Including descriptive titles for all the pages on your website
Ensuring that alt text for links relates to the destination URL
Requiring only a single click for all pointer-based gestures on the site
Providing mechanisms to turn off or remap keyboard shortcuts
Understandable: Both the controls used to operate the system and the information presented should be readable, predictable, and consistent. Content development should consider the needs of individuals who have cognitive impairments, speak English as a second language, or have learning or other disabilities.

Most importantly in this category, your site must use a programming language that supports assistive devices. Adding HTML language attribution in the metadata of online content can facilitate this type of access.

When a user receives an input error, the site must identify and detail the error in writing. Components of the site that require content input from users must have clear, understandable labels.

WCAG also requires your site to respond to input in a predictable manner. For example, if a user focuses on a specific component of the interface, its context should not change. Changing a setting should not alter the context unless the user receives notice of the expected change.

Robust: Most users and types of assistive technologies can successfully interpret digital content, even as standards and devices evolve in the future. Best practices require a standard programming language such as HTML and/or a standard alternative when the site uses non-standard technology. Robust websites and apps are also free of coding errors that can hamper accessibility.

WCAG describes online content as robust when most individuals and assistive devices can access and interpret it successfully.

In Level A, WCAG requires markup languages to avoid parsing, with correctly nested elements, unique I.D.s, no duplicate attributes within elements, and complete start and end tags for elements as needed. In addition, all interface components have a name, role, and value that assistive devices can determine programmatically.

Moving to an advanced level of compliance

Level AA and AAA conformance require more complex implementations. Level AA content maximizes accessibility and meets the mandated standards of federal compliance. At the same time, AAA-conforming sites typically include public service organizations a6a.nd federal, state, and local government agencies.

Partnering with an expert in this space can help your company achieve WCAG compliance at the appropriate level without disrupting your digital operations.

Reach out today to schedule a discussion with an iBridge team member to learn how we can help your business reach and keep conformance with WCAG standards.

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Reach out today to schedule a discussion with an iBridge team member to learn how we can help your business conform with WCAG standards.

Technology

Steps to Global Digital Accessibility Compliance

Contending with International Requirements for Digital Content Accessibility

Digital content accessibility standards ensure everyone can access public online content. These standards address features that provide and enhance accessibility, experience, and comprehension for people with cognitive, intellectual, hearing, dexterity, mobility, or visual impairments.

To avoid inadvertent discrimination as the business landscape becomes ever more global, companies must comply with domestic and global standards for content accessibility. Begin with the basics about some of the most common worldwide systems to bring your business closer to conformance.

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) provide a framework for Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust online content (POUR). An international coalition, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), created and continues to update WCAG to keep up with the technological evolution. The current standards establish three levels of conformance – A, AA, or AAA, depending on the company and various other factors.

Conforming to WCAG helps your company avoid violations of the Americans With Disabilities Act and other anti-discrimination laws.

Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

The United Nations developed the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) to detail the human rights of people with disabilities and eventually serve as a basis for legislation to protect these rights. Two articles of the CRPD apply to digital content accessibility:

Article 9, Accessibility, emphasizes the importance of understanding the issues that may prevent people with disabilities from using and comprehending your online content. Under this article, businesses should address accessibility as early as possible when developing digital offerings such as websites and apps. It also requires providing teams in your organization with training and support on these issues while adapting your digital publications to meet accessibility guidelines
Article 21 addresses freedom of expression and opinion, and access to information. This article mandates that businesses and organizations offer various formats of accessible content at no additional charge, defaulting to open formats whenever possible. The accessible version of publications should be available immediately to prevent inequalities in knowledge and information for people with disabilities.

Country-Level Regulations

Besides broad compliance with CRPD and WCAG for your organization, a business should familiarize itself with the detailed digital accessibility guidelines in its five largest international markets.

While WCAG aligns with compliance laws such as the Americans with Disabilities Act in the United States, other countries may impose requirements not covered under these global standards. Besides checking the websites for the applicable local governments, you can contact the ministry or department of technology in those nations.

Global compliance with digital content accessibility regulations becomes more complex as your organization expands to new markets. Partnering with an experienced team can efficiently align your company’s online assets with the needs of individuals with disabilities.

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Reach out today to schedule a discussion with an iBridge team member to learn how we can help your business conform with WCAG standards.

Technology

Legal Support System Can Add Positive Value To Existing Legal Team

Most attorneys will attest that paralegals play a vital role in the growing legal industry. From conducting investigations, preparing legal briefs, and meeting clients on behalf of lawyers, to adopting complex and changing legal technologies, the legal support staff has grown significantly more important and taken on increasing responsibilities in recent years with increasing responsibility.

Paralegal services have become essential to any legal team, creating more opportunities and job openings than ever. Recently, a poll by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that more than 250,000 paralegals and paralegals work throughout the US. It is estimated that legal support services will increase by 15% over the next few years, and it is getting harder to find and hire paralegals.

How has the legal industry changed with time?

As the legal profession became more complex in the late 1960s, lawyers needed additional help to handle their workload. Lawyers began looking for experienced and talented attorneys to handle the tasks associated with solving cases.

Historically, paralegals were responsible for administrative and clerical work, which soon expanded to gathering evidence to preparing witnesses for cases; the paralegal and the paralegal’s roles have evolved from non-existent to ever-expanding.

The growing demand for paralegals has allowed universities to launch associate degree and certificate programs in paralegal training. Today, over 1,000 colleges and universities offer professional law programs ranging from one-year certifications to master’s degrees.

Approximately 250 of these professional courses are accredited by the American Bar Association. As a result, many law firms have grown in size and hired paralegals.

Until about 2005, it was commonly understood that there were two broad legal business categories:

Low volume, high value, complex work on the one hand
High volume, low cost, routine legal work

Law firms pursued the first category, calling them “high-end,” “big ticket,” and considered them price-insensitive. Law firm fees weren’t the decisive expense for big deals and disputes. Small legal support firms take on the second category of jobs, considered “routine” or “business as usual,” that a crowded marketplace had to offer at competitive prices.

The prevailing opinion at the time was that technology and knowledge management had a much broader scope for routine work where processes could be standardized than for high-end jobs where customers received a high-end touch of reliable service.

From 2005 onwards, however, as cost pressures on clients and law firms mounted, a new possibility emerged—that even the most complex and high-value deals and disputes could be disaggregated, broken down into parts. And most importantly, some of these components, such as document review or using cheaper labor (e.g., outsourcing or paralegal employment) or technology (at least in general), are now more mature and proven.

The common elements of more complex work are distributed to new companies (initially outsourcers of the legal process) and new entities within law firms that can do this work remotely at a low cost. On the other hand, the leading practices within law firms will continue, for the most part, as they have for decades.

How are legal services going to benefit businesses?

Over time, the role of law firms has also changed. Apart from the practice of law, they are responsible for performing legal research work on cases, processing investigations involving large volumes of documents, extracting relevant information from documents for attorneys, and providing litigation support.

Many expected functions are critical and time-consuming tasks for lawyers, but with the help of technology, legal support staff can efficiently complete all these tasks. This brings us to the next point: Technology.

Technology has transformed the role of paralegals into a strong multi-tasker with practical legal knowledge and customer service skills, but also legal technology experts. You can take advantage of this tectonic shift no matter the industry or area of law you practice.

As technology changes, legal services outsourcing has become a common practice for lawyers and law firms. It is a cost-effective solution that helps lawyers streamline their processes and get things done better, faster, and under budget. They have built-in expertise in handling paralegal matters such as litigation, contract management, and legal education.

How are legal services going to bring changes in the market?

Despite this call for change, the legal market has not responded at scale yet. In the global legal market valued at approximately US$850-900 billion, only 1.5% is served by alternative providers.

First, as noted above, traditional law firms did not face competitive pressure until they were forced to change. From this perspective, law firms were much more motivated to stand their ground than to create and manage a new uncompetitive market space. So they are more defensive than aggressive players.

Second, the lack of innovative new services is compounded because traditional legal services and traditional law firms are protected by regulation in most jurisdictions. This is perhaps most evident in the United States. The network of law firms in the United States is so vast that there can be no effective competition for non-legal professionals. Again, it is argued that the incumbent did not need to change, and the market regulates alternative providers.

The third-way law firms rely on their reputation under regulatory protection. They often complain that alternative provider innovations and new business models have yet to meet our customer’s needs fully, wants, and desires. Legislative innovation involves improving old processes and not introducing fundamentally new, fascinating, and commercially relevant services to customers.

When customers are presented with new solutions, systems, and business models that significantly reduce costs while maintaining the quality they demand, they will undoubtedly turn to these alternatives. An enlightened customer is why law firms change and are indeed their biggest threat.

Engage with iBridge LLC for a thoughtful discussion on transformation and innovation; it helps everyone.

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Legal

What Does e-Discovery Mean?

You want to reduce costs and maximize the value of every dollar spent. eDiscovery processes simplify everything from collecting, processing, normalizing, gathering, and hosting data to redacting data for transferring privileged information, providing productive web-based survey capabilities, and formatting select electronic records for production and analysis.

What is e-Discovery?

The essential aspect of e-Discovery refers to identifying and analyzing electronically stored information (ESI) in response to a request for production in court proceedings or investigations. iBridge is highly experienced in processing every type of electronic record, including email, documents, presentations, databases, voicemail, audio and video files, social media, websites, and more.

The discovery process in a digital world is often complicated by the sheer volume of electronic data generated and stored. In addition, electronic documents are more dynamic, unlike printed evidence, and often contain metadata such as timestamps, author and recipient information, and file properties. Retaining the original content and metadata of the ESI is necessary to prevent allegations of theft or falsification of evidence in subsequent proceedings.

How does an expert in the eDiscovery market help you serve clients better

Having an expert eDiscovery partner has several benefits when your client or business uses any tech for document creation, handling, or storage.

Among those, the five most important benefits that iBridge LLC provides are:

Minimizing Cost: While eDiscovery software offers more than just cost savings, it’s essential to understand how much time companies and departments can save with eDiscovery tools. A study found that Thomson Reuters takes about 51 minutes to find essential documents during proceedings. With the right eDiscovery technology, you can take it down to minutes. That time can then be allocated to higher-value tasks, allowing businesses and firms to provide better value to their customers.

Minimizing Error: One of the challenges of e-Discovery is the numerous documents that need to be managed. A small case may produce only one or two gigabytes worth of records, but this data may be composed of hundreds of files, many of which may not be related to the case itself. This applies especially to electronic communications. For example, by simply CC’ing someone in an email, dozens or even hundreds of emails might be added to the production. Appropriate eDiscovery tools can help you screen this massive pile of data by checking the relevance of your documents and eliminating redundant or irrelevant information.

Data Protection: Most legal teams understand the importance of protecting sensitive and personal information in many documents, but they do not always know the best way to protect it. Redacting content from a printed copy can be challenging enough, but digital files are fertile grounds for all sorts of mistakes. Without specialized eDiscovery software, legal departments and firms often commit traditional editing errors, such as black-boxing (redaction) the text or changing the reader’s color to match the document’s background, leaving the data visible to those who know how to access it. You can ensure that your organization complies with relevant privacy laws by editing sensitive content using an e-Discovery partner with the appropriate eDiscovery tools.

Compliance Work: There are complex standards for preserving ESI to maintain document integrity, and failure to comply with these laws can result in significant fines and penalties. Digitizing a document is much easier to save than maintaining a physical file. Still, without a dedicated ESI e-discovery solution, the job can quickly become a hassle. Manually saving a file to a hard drive without a well-planned structure is a recipe for misplaced files. To make matters worse, improperly converting a file from one format to another can change or delete metadata which is essential for demonstrating ESI compliance.

Better Accessibility to Data: Courts and legal entities often still rely on paper for many processes. However, the discovery process must be able to manage a variety of digital file formats when collecting documents, images, and other sources. Some legal departments believe they can rely on a patchwork of software to handle this data.

Even as digital solutions are gradually adopted in legal practices, there is still much to be done in the discovery process. With the dramatic increase in electronic documents over the last few decades, eDiscovery has emerged as the most misunderstood and mismanaged part of the litigation and investigation process. iBridge is here to help you understand and manage it properly.

iBridge’s eDiscovery services are designed to assist corporate legal departments and law firms increase operational efficiency without compromising quality or security. A thorough and experienced eDiscovery team and supporting technology can make or break your case, but it doesn’t have to break the bank. Talk to us about our eDiscovery services!

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