The paper piles up...

The concept of the paperless office has been doing the rounds for more years than many of us care to count. The fact of the matter is that paper is not likely to be eradicated from the average office for the foreseeable future. Consumers like their paper too much, electronic signatures haven`t taken off yet, not all offices are wholly digitised and older generations haven`t necessarily adopted the electronic era with the enthusiasm of their younger counterparts.

In the meantime, many companies view paper, and what`s euphemistically known as `output`, as a necessary evil. The middle road between paper-piling systems and digital dreamscapes lies in managing output as a cost centre, digitising where relevant, archiving where prudent and keeping a firm eye on security, risk and corporate governance (and other) regulations.

The paperless office, says Itec COO Philip Perkins, can become a reality, but this is dependent on two things: cultural acceptance of a non-paper environment and user education, understanding and fluency in the technologies currently used to disseminate information.

"Environmental considerations are currently bringing pressure to bear. A lot of people are starting to consider usage and wastage. Twenty percent of printed documents," he adds, "are never collected."

Research conducted by Xerox reveals that for every R1 spent on printing in the business environment, another six is spent on the rest of the workflow, says Ronnie Oeschger, divisional manager of the office systems group at Bytes Document Solutions.

"In a R1 billion organisation, document management costs are about 3% of revenue. Thirty percent of this cost (R9 million) can be saved by undertaking office document assessments, which will identify and uncover hidden costs and opportunities at every turn. It will reveal ways to reduce time and costs by optimising the flow of documents and the information they contain."

And therein lies the route that CIOs and IT managers should be taking. Instead of ignoring the paper/printer/ink cartridges/fax machine problem, which many companies seem to do, it`s advisable to find a company that specialises in such solutions and can provide assessments and impartial advice, and re-engineer the paper piles in the same way as every other aspect has been re-engineered in the Internet era.

Glen Ansell, i5 Group CEO, points out that companies not changing from paper to electronic information flow is not really understandable.

"You do not need to go out and buy a workflow solution. Sometimes flows and process are very basic triggers that you can get in day-to-day office suite tools," he says.

Recent moves by corporates to digitise paper archives are at least partly responsible for rapidly increasing data storage requirements. The general approach seems to be to keep paper archives offsite and have digital copies thereof in storage systems, readily available in case they are needed - usually for legal discovery. Not everything needs to be digitised, however. Furthermore, companies need to consider the long-term costs of storing documents electronically in terms of maintenance, upgrades, disaster recovery and management, as well as considering legal and regulatory issues around where documents must be stored and for how long.

Says Metrofile information governance executive Paul Mullon: "If you look to the ECT Act, in principle, it says you can scan documents and destroy the originals, as long as you can prove authenticity and reliability. But the Act does not specify what you need to do to meet that requirement. Companies also need to look at other things like policies, procedures and audit trails. If you digitally store a copy and store an original paper record, then a lot of the legal considerations fall away.

"There might be implications around location," he warns. "Some laws may specify a location for certain types of information or documentation, for example, at the company head office or registered premises. Sometimes the law will mention that storage can be outsourced. Other times, this is not mentioned. There is a legal implication and companies will need to check this from a legal perspective each time. Also note that when the law talks about a document, it is referring to the storage of a record and not the working copy."

Twenty percent of printed documents are never collected.

Philip Perkins, COO, Itec

One of the arguments both for and against paperless environments is the security issue. Says i5`s Ansell: "Paper is expensive, space to store it is expensive and moving paper long-distance is not effective or timely in terms of the speed of business these days. It is easier to PDF it and away you go via e-mail. Security comes into play too. Depending on the level of security needed in an organisation, there are technologies out there that can cater for that to the extent that I can send something to someone and only they can read it. The argument is that because it can be e-mailed, anyone can see it. This is not necessarily accurate and depends on what an organisation is willing to spend."

Says Gestetner Consulting Services manager Bertus van Rooy: "People don`t generally understand security issues around document security, for example, as it applies to multifunctional devices (MFDs). You don`t see companies implementing something simple like equipment access control. The device comes with all sorts of features to prevent unauthorised user access, but when it is deployed, it is all default as sent from the factory. So any user can go to any machine and perform any function. If the device is connected to back-end systems, this means anyone has access to those systems. These devices also end up as the repository for all sorts of information, like contact information that is stored directly in its hard drive or indirectly through the device."

Van Rooy further cites sensitive documents left lying on printers, device hard drives that are not erased when machines are disposed of, and unauthorised access to said drives via the network as security considerations that are frequently overlooked.

You do not need to go out and buy a workflow solution.

Glen Ansell, CEO, i5

As with everything to do with corporate operations in today`s heavily regulated business environment, a strategic approach is best. Companies need to evaluate what devices they have and what archives they have, up to and including the forgotten filing cabinets at the back of the basement.

Some documentation will usually always need to be securely stored in paper format. Other types can be scanned, indexed and categorised, and the paper disposed of. In many cases, devices can be consolidated and/or upgraded to more modern and sophisticated versions that have advanced management features built in.

Current and future documentation needs to be managed and flowed through the organisation so that it ends up where it belongs at the end of its useful life - the bin or a storage box. Digital information needs to be managed, stored, secured and, again, disposed of in a way that takes risk and security into account. And we all thought paper was a simple technology.