Paper chase

Last year the Des Moines Area Community College (DMACC) embarked on a pilot program to go 'paper-free'. Its western campus does not have any books or a library. Instead the school has an e-resource centre equipped with web workstations, e-books and online journals. Students are not expected to copy what is on the board. Rather they use Compaq iPaq handhelds to access e-text books, syllabi and class materials, take notes and exams. The campus even has its own wireless infrastructure. Faculty uses smartboards on which professors can jot down notes that students download onto handhelds. All data, including each student's work, is kept on the school's web-accessible storage area network.

DMACC's brave jump into the digital world throws up some interesting questions about the technological and psychological shift towards a paperless world. Contrary to predictions for the 'paperless office', paper continues to play an important role in organisations. Filing cabinets and in-boxes have not become museum curiosities that some office automation gurus predicted. There are still many arguments for paper: it's more convenient, portable, has legal admissibility, and can be read without special equipment or a

technology learning curve. Even DMACC admits a mind shift away from paper remains a major hurdle and has as a result implemented a limit on the amount of paper students can print, to deter the practice.

Given that paper is unlikely to become redundant anytime soon, if ever, organisations must learn new tricks to make it 'smarter', by assimilating it into business processes more efficiently. But getting there requires a holistic approach to document management (DM) that tightly integrates hardware and software technologies.

Modern documents are not just limited to letters, invoices, proposals and engineering drawings. They also encompass electronic media – emails, Word files, spreadsheets, and HTML web pages – that may, or may not, make it to paper. Collectively, all these documents are hard to organise, difficult to find and share, and impossible to keep under control. Paper represents a special problem because it takes up a lot of space, cannot be transferred physically down networks, and cannot be searched by content. Organisations have responded with a 'grab-bag' of digital peripheral devices such as printers, copiers, faxes and scanners. Many have also invested in DM software applications and groupware systems to provide management capabilities once paper documents are scanned into a DM system as digitised objects.

There are several benefits of going digital beyond just saving space or trees. First is avoiding a duplication of management effort. A centrally managed electronic DM system means that people do not need to file paper copy, which rapidly becomes physically unmanageable and inefficient to use. After all digital 'disk farms' are easier to manage than paper mountains – provided of course that all the stored disk files are neatly indexed and ordered. "Digital management means you don't have to store or print all your documents which helps determine what to keep, what to discard, what to file or store," says Tonis Haamer, solutions business development manager for Canon Europe.

Second is efficient communication and distribution of documents across the enterprise. A digital DM system offers a 'one-to-many' relationship. Just as copier replaced carbon paper, making it easier to generate multiple copies, so DM has increased the number of people who can be in the loop. "One person can access hard copy at a time, but with a DM system it is just the press of a button and an electronic document can be accessed and worked on by 20 people simultaneously," says Haamer.

The third main benefit is easier access. Research outfit Gartner estimates that knowledge workers waste 10 hours per week sifting through paperwork. The time lost searching for information can mount up. A study by CimTech UK finds that between 10% and 15% of a company's revenue is spent on finding and managing documentary information. "There's a cost attached to storing a document... and for every lost document there's also an associated cost," says Richard De Lay, head of marketing for Ricoh UK. However, digital content's searchability, hypertexted cross-references, and instant archiveability is turning the tide, and new imaging technologies allows 'free-spirited' paper documents to be quickly and accurately searched and located without sifting through arch lever files or even leaving your desk.

Intellect, a UK trade body for the IT, telco and electronics industry, recently highlighted a disconnect between DM hardware and software technology. Intellect found that print, copier and scanner device manufacturers had little understanding of the software-side of DM, specifically relating to document lifecycle management, versioning, archiving, search and security.

De Lay asserts that "true" DM can only be achieved by a broader approach that links document image scanning, retrieval and display systems with DM software to form an integrated end-to-end solution. "A holistic approach to DM increases efficiency across document input, output and throughput processes," says De Lay. He describes an iterative cycle – a document comes into (or is created by) a company, enters into its DM system, is managed and is communicated to users in electronic or hard copy format – in which both technologies play a key role. Document imaging systems allow companies to convert paper hard copy into electronic documents – often in batch mode, and often from a bureau or service operation – and to retrieve it via print and copy output. DM software enables business to manage and control documents once they enter the network – helping business to file, locate and process information with greater efficiency. "The cycle is tightly bound and there's a clear requirement to manage the capture, storage, access and retrieval or output of digital information in a manner that links every stage of the process," says De Lay. "It's no good having a supplier that understands bits only."

But things are changing. "IT departments are getting more closely aligned with office services, the people who typically buy peripherals," notes David Wilson, business development manager for Oki Systems. "They're getting around to the notion that peripherals should be treated as another managed server on the network." Second, document imaging vendors are developing partner networks that complement their own expertise in delivering capture/output devices to provide greater management and storage capabilities. "These partners can look at all aspects of the document lifecycle and determine the most appropriate configuration of hardware and software across the organisation to guarantee efficient use and management of information," says Nigel Allen, senior product manager at Kyocera Mita.

A technological advance has been a steady evolution towards a networked multifunction document printing (MPF) device. MFPs blur the distinction between photocopiers, fax machines, printers, scanners and other document-handling devices by evolving their functionality into a single device that is either directly connected to a PC workstation, or indirectly connected via a network. "MFPs that do it all rationalise peripheral investments by cutting the number of input and output devices in the office," says De Lay. All the leading peripherals companies seem to be headed down the MFP route. Most of Canon, Ricoh and Xerox's newer product lines are based on the MFP paradigm and play a key role handling complex documents received from multiple media.

MFPs are also becoming more powerful, providing enormous hard disk storage capabilities and evolving to handle email and interoperability with groupware systems such as Lotus Notes. "MFPs have evolved from document capture and output devices to network servers in their own right," says De Lay. "They now offer richer user experiences through customised control panels and by tapping into the workflow capabilities of DM software."

Canon is one company leading the charge with a "whole-product" proposition which forms an integral part of its pan-European Canon Document Management Intelligence (CDMi) initiative.

CDMi aims to integrate MFP devices with DM software applications through functionally targeted professional services. Haamer sees great benefit in being a one-stop-shop. "Customers appreciate a single point of contact and they avoid warranty issues of 'is this a hardware or software vendor issue?'"

Canon has a myriad of document imaging devices – from standalone peripherals to integrated MFPs. But it has also developed a software system that includes production-level scanning and comprehensive storage and management capabilities that are tightly linked to its MFPs. A key part of CDMi is derived from partnerships with DM software providers. Canon's main European partner is ADOS, which provides processing, indexing, archiving and retrieval capabilities for all types of scanned and e-documents. "We're one of the first companies to open up our MFPs to third parties, providing a toolkit to customise the interface," says Haamer. ADOS has already built its own interface on top of Canon's MFPs, allowing users to add scanned paper originals to the many e-document types already managed by its DM system. The scanned documents are assigned categories within the ADOS system and transferred to the ADOS repository for processing, indexing and storage. "Once a paper document enters our system, we treat it like any other object and integrate it into the processing workflow," Dave Rossi, ADOS sales director, explains.

Similarly, DM software providers, such as Documentum and FileNet, are working to maintain seamless links to document imaging and other input-output management systems. For example, Kofax's imaging technology captures both scanned paper documents and electronic files and converts them into Documentum objects for storage, management and retrieval in a single DM solution. FileNet meanwhile has built-in scanning facilities to acquire, index, and store paper-documents and faxes alongside other electronic files in its native document repositories.

DM is more than just tidier offices or improved filing systems. "It's about empowering all areas of the business to use document-based information more effectively to drive revenues and profitability," says Haamer. The technical benefits of digitising paper documents manifest themselves in several ways in organisations; from simple costs savings associated with the elimination of print and copying costs to better operational efficiencies.

Notable applications of DM can be found in most paper-intensive processes, notably regulatory submissions to the pharmaceutical industry, where speeding up the FDA patent approval process can literally make companies millions of dollars by bringing drugs to market quicker. Also, new corporate reporting regulations, such as Basel II and Sarbanes-Oxley. "Any document strategy must be configured to generate appropriate audit trails to comply with the various legal requirements that pertain to data protection, retention and dissemination," Allen warns.

While it's not unusual for companies to improve their bottom lines through cost savings associated with lower print and copying costs and lower storage, the improvements in changed business processes are the real benefits. Boston-based accounting firm KAF Financial Group turned to a Xerox DM solution that scans and digitises over 35,000 documents and posts them to the web. KAF claims to have eliminated 75% of overhead personnel dedicated to copying, printing and filing. Importantly, the modern document formats allowed KAF to accrue more tangible benefits resulting from increased process efficiency for internal departments, leading to higher levels of service. "DM allows you to concentrate on the things that really matter to the business and less time looking for paper documents stored in filing cabinets or off-site," De Lay notes.

Achieving agile business processes supported by integrated document handling systems cannot be realised without targets. Research shows that over 70% of users have difficulty in cost-justifying DM. Because many companies do not carry out an analysis and measurement of operational parameters before investing in DM they find it almost impossible to quantify success afterwards. Counting filing cabinets is not the answer. The value of information on paper lies in its reuse, not its storage. "Companies should measure how many times a document is recalled, not how much room it takes up," says Haamer. What is needed is a business centric approach that helps organisations identify the major pressures on its business and the impact of DM on operational parameters.

The paperless office as a goal in itself should be considered as achievable or as useful as the paperless toilet. Few DM technology vendors seriously bought into the notion; many betting that offices will have more, not less paper in them, but more automation to manage it. This view has turned out to be spot on. The advent of the digital age has created more paper, not less. Research from Xplor shows that 90% of documents, no matter how they are created, were printed in 1995 and predicts that number to decline to 30% by 2005. Over the same period, the actual number of printed and digital document files stored on disk will rise from 1 trillion to 6.5 trillion. The maths works out to a doubling of printed page volume every year.

While the digital age may slowly be edging out paper in some key industries, business information today still remains a delicate balance of paper and electronic documents. The key is to allow fluid movement of information between the paper and digital worlds.

Smart companies are starting to bridge this gap – running their businesses from efficient 'electronic document vaults' rather than unmanageable paper mountains. "Paper archives should be used as a remote storage bunker, while the electronic DM system provides the vehicle for day-to-day work," says De Lay.

CBR OPINION

An escalating range and volume of documents in the workplace is making it difficult for separate document capture, storage and management systems to take full advantage of the benefits of digital information.

A holistic approach that bridges the historical divide between DM hardware and software can solve this problem, and vendors are working to link document imaging hardware and software services more tightly and more directly. Done correctly, it can transform useless paper mountains into flows of business knowledge by providing controlled, location transparent and format-independent output and access.