Document Management: Is Paperless the Way to Go For Your Organization?

We all need paper to do our work, but it accumulates quickly. Our files grow fatter and fatter, and then they grow some more. Folders and filing systems make it easier to find our documents. Records managers organize, archive and retrieve our information. But the amount of paper keeps growing. Paper files are often hard to find. Records may not be in their proper folder. Or they may be borrowed and then remain on somebody's desk. Studies show that professionals often lose up to 500 hours a year looking for documents. Those days are gone. Document management offers a better way to manage the records you rely on.

Document management and the way your organization handles the process, is becoming a big concern for businesses. Why is that?

• Is it the fact that knowledge not put in some type of retrievable form is lost when turnover occurs?
• Is it the fact that businesses do not have the luxury of being able to spend quality time with employees to ensure that procedures are followed as per the expectations of management?
• Are external processes constantly changing, and staff can't keep up with it? Could it even be simpler than all this, and businesses are trying to improve productivity time, and save some costs on storage and office space?

All of these are valid reasons why "Paperless Office" is becoming of interest to all types of organizations.

Documents in a business process are a means to measure, manage and improve processes. Workflow and routing help organizations move information on a timely basis. Knowledge and the sharing of information must come in the form of documentation, as organizations cannot afford turnover without a knowledge structure in place. People are creators of the facts and the documentation to manage the process. Processes define the organization's framework and count on the documentation for defining, auditing and startup. Change occurs in all organizations, and documents allow for change to take place. This facilitates the change by a documentation view. A paperless office might not be the completely correct terminology, but rather "Document Management" which is the computerized management of electronic as well as paper-based documents. Document management systems generally include the following components:

• an optical scanner and OCR (Optical Character Recognition) system or software to convert paper documents into an electronic form
• a database system to store documents in an organized manner
• a search mechanism to quickly find specific documents.

A successful organization needs to:

• have sharable, accessible, and locatable (electronically, if possible) documents
• be open to analysis and adjustments
• allow people to leverage processes
• have management documents with strategic direction and operational facts
• Have external documents to contain the market environment

New document management systems allow for scanning, archiving, searching on criteria sets, workflow and routing procedures, electronic record keeping, record retention maintenance, voice recordings of minutes for staff review, complete audit trails of all activities, security for those in the organization who should be able to see or perform updates, and creation within the infrastructure of the business. Productivity time is now down to seconds for finding documents, rather than hours.

Correspondence is performed right from the staff member's desk, rather than moving to and from fax machines, and copiers. Policy and procedures are reviewed and tested right at staff's PC workstations, keeping them up-to-date with changes and updates. Human Resource departments have all employee and potential employee information in one secure centralized data base for easy access and response. Insurance forms, legal issues, can be submitted directly from their desks, as well. The ideas of use really become endless, and systems must be flexible enough to accommodate your business needs.

With the ever-expanding application of computers into business areas as diverse as accounting, desktop publishing, billing, mail, and scheduling, it seemed in the early 2000s that the real paperless office was just around the corner. Ironically, just the opposite has transpired. The ease with which computers enable people to print all sorts of documents have created a flood of papers. Some analysts believe that the paperless office is still an achievable and laudable goal, but that certain key technologies such as optical character recognition (OCR) must be improved. Others, however, argue that the tangibility of paper documents yields certain benefits that will never disappear.