I remember when I first heard about the paperless office, many years ago. At the time, I thought it was a great idea - organizations will eliminate their use of paper, more data will flow through computing devices, and a new era will dawn.
Ah, the naivete of youth.
I suppose that a day may come when we achieve a paperless office, but it won’t be soon. Why? I can think of several reasons.
First, we are too enmeshed in business processes that rely on the paper document. Want proof? Walk down to your accounting department, and watch all the A/P clerks at work. They are all processing invoices - paper invoices. Amazing when you think about it. Accounting systems have come a long way, but in the end, payables and receivables rely heavily on paper. The only way we get away from this in reengineering the business process globally. Make invoicing use a standard data transmission. Make that data a file if you like, and attach it to an e-mail. But make the data universal in format. We could do that right now using XML if all the accounting vendors could agree on some standard XML field names for data exchange. But you are going to have to get all the accounting vendors to agree, and craft an intake process for those data objects. Good luck on that.
But even if we convinced the ISVs to add these facilites to their accounting packages, there will always be the small business that uses a paper invoice. So on this count, paperless? No. Less paper? Yes.
Another prime example of an old model business process is anything having to do with a fax machine. Think about it - we still rely on a document transmission method that can trace it roots back over 160 years. That’s amazing. But it’s still getting used, in mailrooms all over the world, right now. I’ll admit there are advantages to fax - reliable, low bandwidth, uses readily available analog phone lines - but the receiving fax machine still frequently ties us to a piece of paper. Granted, faxes are now frequently processed as images but many start life as paper, and I’d bet a large majority of the received image faxes are printed and filed. And those images frequently have to be processed by OCR software, adding complexity and expense to this old school technology.
But like the accounting example, getting rid of fax is a tough prospect. E-mail has certainly reduced the need for fax, but I’m waiting for the day when someone asks me to set up a new network infrastructure and tells me they DON’T want fax. So no paperless here either. But faxes as images do mean less paper.
And for the trifecta, look at a business process that uses paper forms - any process. What an incredible model of inefficency in a world where everything is connected, and a good e-forms system can model a business process with a higher level of compliance and consistency than ever possible. Paper forms are a business dinosaur, and they should be extinct.
But in our world, the entire business environment is a Jurrasic Park. And again, there are those small businesses buying sales slip pads, “While you were out” pads, and countless others at the local office supply store. So again, not paperless, but maybe less paper.
The second reason paper stays is convenience. Right now, I can print a document, grab a pen and go anywhere and read, annotate, and edit that document. It’s cheap, it’s portable - and it’s a data security nightmare. I’d bet more organizations have lost sensitive data through dumpster diving for paper than have ever lost it through stolen laptops, or network security violations. Think about that next time your sitting outdoors at Starbucks and a quick breeze blows away a few pages of confidential financial data. But that darned convenience factor overrides all.
So what about the paperless office? To quote my Brooklyn friends, “Fugetaboutit”. Not going to happen. No matter what a vendor of a “paperless office” product tells you. But - and you knew the “but” was coming - we can move to a “less paper” office.
And it’s not really that hard. Three steps I’ve already outlined - eliminating paper invoices and fax machines, and implementing e-forms - not only reduce paper, but can have a real impact on operating expenses. For example, think of the man hours spent keying data from paper invoices, or validating that data from scanned images. Think of the risk (and printing cost) eliminated by modeling business processes with e-forms.
And there are more steps that can, and must, be done in parallel with these. One absolute requirement is a well implemented enterprise content management system. All the documents, document images, etc, must be managed and contained in repositories which are connected to the users who require them through the line of business application they use, whether it is Microsoft Excel or SAP. And think of the operating expense reduction we could all see by eliminating all those filing cabinets full of paper, and all those boxes stored offsite at your favorite document storage location.
But we’ll still want to print that file and read it on the plane, or while laying on the sofa, or sitting on the patio. And we’ll still jot notes on pads of paper. It’s just the way we are.
Disclaimer - the author is employed by a developer of middleware which connects document capture and enterprise content management systems to line of business applications. The opinions expressed are those of the author.