The Future of Documents

The report published by The Brown-Wilson group positions Xerox as the top ranking green outsourcer ! This report explores how new economic dimensions are impacting the growth of the sustainability technology sector.

Xerox is ranked “greenest” in the Document Process Outsourcing area by its clients, which is not too surprising. The criteria used included sustainability metrics, social and economic principles, environmental principles, LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Green Building Rating system, and Six Sigma.

But even better, when asked to nominate which outsourcing companies are the “greenest”, Xerox comes first with an astounding 440 nominations! That puts Xerox in front of Accenture (429), CSC (403), CapGemini (396) and IBM Global (390). HP / EDS comes 10th, with 259 nominations.

That is a huge progression from last year’s 35th position in that same ranking. That shows that customers now see Xerox as the trusted outsourcing partner that can take them on the journey to the “Less Paper Office” – reducing overall carbon footprint of their infrastructure, using less paper, less energy, generating less waste, but also optimizing their Document Business Processes to remove paper – when appropriate- and improve overall quality.

That’s what we call “Smarter Ways to Green”: click on the video below to learn more.

Just wrapped up a webcast on Money Saving Content Management Strategies. This started as a very interesting discussion with Brian Lincoln and other members of the Docushare team, on how ECM could contribute to some of the core topics covered in my blog – going “Less Paper”, being green, improving productivity – all that while cutting costs.

In this webcast, Brian covers present – working – strategies for Content Management, while I talk about some of the Future of Document Technologies that will have a strong effect – all that in 24 minutes.

In the Attachments tab, you’ll be able to (re)discover a video of Transient Paper, showing how it can be imaged using UV light, vanishes over a few hours, and can be re-printed over and over again.

Enjoy!

Today is Earth Day! Although you should contribute everyday, here are some special things you can do today:

5. Use Less Toner

4. Print on High Yield Paper

3. Compute your print infrastructure’s carbon footprint and react

2. Read about the Less Paper Office and implement

1. Learn about Smarter ways to Green by watching the video below (click image)

This is the provocative question that Ursula Burns, president of Xerox, asks in this Business Week article.

As she points out, green might have been overhyped over the last two years. But in these troubled times comes the moment of truth: will those green aspirations continue? She cites a recent corporate responsibility survey that estimates that 31% of companies will see their Corporate Social Responsibility budgets decrease.

Fortunately, green is not only for the sake of green – it’s also a way to reduce costs and improve efficiencies. For example, Xerox reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 18% since 2002. But the bottomline is, these efficiency improvements also allowed us to save a solid $ 18 million dollars in 2006 only.

How do you optimize your IT?  improving your data centres is an obvious one,  but don’t forget to optimize your print fleets, and make the less paper office a reality by improving your business processes.