The Future of Documents

To better contemplate the transformations that the document has undergone, it is sometimes good to look back at the past of the documents.

That’s one wat of looking at the United Nations’ World Digital Library. It showcases “documents” such as rock paintings, parchments, manuscripts or other extremely interesting pieces of the human history - this with a cool navigation User Interface.

The material is drawn from around 30 libraries and archives from around the world, and dates back to up to 8,000 BC. It should expand later to non-Western items in the future - 380 from the 1170 current items being from Europe. Interestingly enough, these documents are still covered by the copyright law that applies in their country - the longest copyright period ever !

Business Week has a very interesting article on the benefits of less paper, or even paperless, in the Health Industry. Kaiser Permanente is cited as a role model for removing paper out of their offices, and moving towards eHealth records.

Interestingly enough, cost is not necessarily the main driver, as they admit that “there is unknown, if any, cost savings benefits”. However, other benefits accrue through improved productivity, and less redundant operations because of informaiton retained in paper records. However, at the end of the day, these will translate into cost savings anyway, as well as a more environmental-friendly behaviour. Not to mention improved quality of service - invaluable to the patient, with more up-to-date information.

Unfortunately, those players that have to make the biggest investments (small practices of doctors) are not the ones that reap most of those benefits - most typically the patient, hospital, health plan, and pharmacists. The up-front cost of establishing a eHealth record for small practices is still quite prohibitive, and the disruption in their work processes is quite significant at first. Only 4% of physicians have a comprehensive system in place, and another 13% use basic electronic system.

Even doctors in hospitals have a steep learning curve - only capable to receive half their normal patient load for the first two weeks, because of disruptions due to the electronic system . But this gets back to normal after a few weeks, usually.

The Health industry, like many others, can really benefit from a Less Paper strategy -  also productivity improvements, quality of service, and many other benefits - which eventually turn into significant cost reductions. This is usually best achieved by getting help from an expert - capable of re-engineering your business processes, and minimizing disruption.

Are you drowning in paper documents? Want to go paperless, or at least “less paper”, and move all of these documents into the electronic world? But you want to make sure these documents are safely stored on a central ECM system with all of its benefits: indexing, metadata, backed up, and securely accessible 24hrs a day?

Docushare Virtual Filing Cabinet can help you. This new offering combines archival software, a high-speed scanner, and a new Docushare 6.5 version. But, probably even more important, it includes some consulting to help you get started, analyse your existing file cabinet organization, and set up your electronic system.

Besides the easy and secure access and distribution, this sort of technology helps you go green, save on costs, and claim storage space back.

Sounds interesting? For more information, check this short video out by clicking the image below.

The document is evolving from a static, confidential container information to a social, shared and tagged device. Web 2.0 is paving the way to the “Future of Documents”.

I am currently following a great training by Sharon Crost on how to cross-fertilize the various media which constitute Web 2.0 and how to make your interactive marketing much more powerful through Web 2.0. Definitely worth it, if you get a chance.

In doing that, I am trying to see beyond the obvious ways to improve my blog audience and content, and to draw parallels with the “document” as we know it - how do you cross-fertilize documents and sources of information to make your customer documents more focused and more impactful? How do you differentiate your documents from others, so that customers drowning in Information Overload pick your documents over others? How do you make your documents “viral”?

These are a few things I’ll try to reflect upon over the next few weeks - although my blogging might be a bit disrupted by my XPLOR participation.

Autonomy announced last week that it will acquire Interwoven for 775 M$ in cash.

Very promising synergy between a company providing state-of-the art document and content understanding technologies, and a leader in Electronic Content Management (ECM). This will allow more automatic tagging and content analysis of your documents, directly as they enter your ECM system. Furthermore, this is a very good way for Autonomy to reinforce its position into the exploding eDiscovery space.

This is a synergy that only a few companies can provide today. Xerox very well positioned for this,  with its Litigation Services branch, its Docushare ECM solution, possibly combined in the future with some of its unique “meaning extraction” technologies such as Factspotter.

Well, maybe not quite 2009, but things are moving.

On the one hand, A few more details on Plastic Logic’s much anticipated e-Reader can be found in this video. It will support most office documents, subscription content, and advertising, with a form factor and a price which should make competitive against current players and “ready for mass adoption”. Unfortunately, its launch is now delayed to early 2010.

On the other hand though, Prime View International (PVI) announced that it would start mass production of flexible electrophotoretic displays (EPDs) in the second quarter of this year, and color EPDs by the end of the year. To be confirmed…

As we getting ready for the Less Paper office, it is important to “know the enemy” - paper.

The Environmental Paper Network has a very good report on Paper and the state of its industry: types of paper, all about recycling, cleaner production and responsible fiber sourcing.

By reading this very interesting document, you’ll discover that over 40% of the industrial wood pulp goes into paper production (growing), paper production is among the top toxic releasing industries, or how printing and writing paper is being used, or what difference a recycled paper makes from a virgin paper.

An avalanche of very interesting facts - definitely worth reading. But please, do not print the 77 pages, even though it makes it much easier to read

The Web Document is becoming mainstream. The number of unique scribd visitors tripled between January and December 2008 - culminating at 23 million unique visitors in November 2008. This makes scribd pop up at rank 16 in ComScore’s top 20 social media sites. Although 10 times less than blogger.com or Facebook, this is still quite an impressive achievement. Competing services such as Docstoc or Issuu attract significantly less visitors, but are still growing.

It is a snowball effect - as more users contribute content, the service becomes much more relevant to everyone and easier to find. I was pleasantly surprised, recently, to see quite scribd documents come up among the top results for my Google searches.

This confirms an emerging trend in the Future of Documents: the social, web document is becoming a significant alternative to paper. Many alternatives are required in Document 2.0 to move towards the Less Paper Office while covering all possible use case scenarios for the document. The web document is one of them, and is becoming a very credible alternative for sharing documents in a view-only, easy to share format, complementary to virtual desktops or online office document applications.

An interesting IDC report on How Generation Y works with paper and Electronic Documents in the Office.

Among the key conclusions: this workforce under 30 years old still see paper continue to play a critical role in many everyday business processes. Although they do not see paper disappearing overnight, they are moving fast towards the Less Paper office - although this is driven more by their “green” and environmental consciousness than technology savviness.

Other interesting insights include how document length or formats impact the preferred document form, how Gen Y perceives faxing and scanning, and where electronic and paper have the respondents’ preference.

Although quite focused on hardcopy vendors, this report is the first one of a very promising IDC series on “The Future of Print”, and can be ordered here.

Interesting article on the New Yorker about the Future of Newspaper - how many newspapers (paper but also electronic) are going bankrupt, because of decreasing advertising revenue.

Beyond the traditional print vs digital divide, the overall future of newspapers looks pretty grim. As the author points out: “many argue that if newspapers had understood they were in the information business, rather than the print business, they would have adapted more quickly and more successfully to the Net”. Most newspapers suffer from the “Not invented here” syndrome - no liink to other articles or provides.

Still, according to the author, the real problem for newspapers, isn’t the Internet, but the readers. They want access to everything, now, and for free. “That’s a consumer’s dream, but eventually it’s going to collide with reality: if newspapers’ profits vanish, so will their product. [...] But that situation can’t last. Soon enough, we’re going to start getting what we pay for, and we may find out just how little that is.”

Anyway, maybe lessons for all of us in the traditional print business - learn how to make the best of the Internet and new technologies, and surf the wave rather than fight against it.