The paperless office remains elusive
Interesting feedback on the AIIM panel discussion on the paperless office . Ron Miller from Fierce Content Management describes his attendance of this panel discussion, hosted by Docushare, at the occasion of the launch of the Docushare Virtual Filing Cabinet.
The discussion mainly went along an interesting divide between content in two areas: coming from outside (customers, providers, 3rd parties) and internal content. As the discussion went, participants admitted the first area cannot be turned to “paperless” overnight – it needs to take into account the various parties’ constraints. I would add that in most cases, it all comes down to the lowest common denominator for communication between the various parties – which often ends up being paper.
Going paperless is easier in house – at least in theory. However, just like at my Document 2.0 at Office 2.0 panel, a few speakers admitted they still liked their hard copy after the ice broke. And, as the author concludes, moving your paper documents into digital format is only part of the problem. After your documents are scanned, , move the digital version of your documents around, index them - not to mention storage requirements. That’s what ECM is about. However, ECM does not take care of the extraction of all the structured content you have on those documents, for categorisation, indexing, or intelligent analysis…
Anyway, lots of great debate around our favourite medium – which we love to hate.
The distinction in particular
Hosted by Docushare
I implemented a “paperless” office where although paper was permitted through the door, there were no filing cabinets – just one pedestal for each user and MFDs for network scanning and a ECM system. Any paper left on desks at the end of the day was gathered by the cleaners and placed in a collective “sin bin”. The concept worked brilliantly but the net effect of printing was that it went through the roof – great news for MFD manufacturers! The paper document became an ephemeral reading media. We did another experiment with one department where half the team we given 22″ wide screens and the others left with 15 – 19″ monitors. The 22″ folks printed 30% less after receiving their new screens – looks like we will trend towards paperless when there is a good enough alternative.
You make a great point. Search Google for “paperless office” and about half the first page are posts and articles over a year old. This isn’t a new idea, but for some reason people just haven’t been able to implement it. Is the technology too hard? Are the cost savings not large enough? not real enough?
Well, Duh! One cannot expect to go paperless in isolation. We implemented an Electronic Medical Record System at our medical practice and our Sin Bin is still always full at the end of each day! Am I surprised? No, Because still many trading partner transactions are paper based. The objective is not to focus on paperless office goal but rather the processes, tools, technology, awareness, adoption etc. If every establishment goes paperless overnight by some miracle, will Xerox be still be in business? Get real.
Kumar,
Exactly! It’s about the entire communication ecology, not about the “office.” Until all the pieces are in place you don’t get to phase change. When you do, it’s a real question whether any of the globals will be left standing in their present form.