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In the past couple of decades, organizational leadership has focused heavily on efficiency: operating lean and asking their employees to maintain continuity with fewer and fewer resources. But cutting budgets only goes so far. In recent years, managers and workers have refocused on a far more pertinent question: instead of doing the same with less (efficiency), how can we do more with the same (productivity)? Paper is a serious drag on both efficiency and productivity. A worldwide survey conducted by industry analyst IDC shows that document management challenges account for a 21% loss of organizational productivity. Not that you need numbers to convince you. You see it and feel it every day. Email, accounting software, ERPs, digital publishing and a hundred other technologies promise to eliminate paper and usher in a golden age of digital perfection. But creating a paperless office eludes many of us. What is the best way to move toward a paperless environment without losing information? And how can you do it quickly?
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Imagine no more filing cabinets, fewer printing devices, and shelves of storage reclaimed from paper and toner supplies. Less shipping, less photocopying, less filing and searching. The first advantage is a cleaner, brighter, more spacious office.
Automated workflow makes the right content accessible at the touch of a button whenever and wherever you need it. It takes only seconds to route and share documents across multiple departments and systems.
Your competitors are only going to get faster, and the agility that a paperless office gives you is vital to remaining competitive.
Custom access controls and digital data security make it easier and less expensive to maintain compliance and reduces the likelihood that missing documents will result in fines or lost revenue.
Information is only seconds away with a quick search — no more putting people on hold to dig through folders. Deliver the speed and quality of support your customers and vendors deserve.
Using digital workflows instead of paper results in greater transparency, allowing management to monitor business processes in real time for smarter decision making.
If you have a “green” initiative in place, one of the easiest ways to reduce your carbon footprint is to print, ship and store less paper.
Pam Naslund Office Manager, PEER Bearing
If you’re planning to go paperless, it is
important to have a timeframe for making
the leap. Going paperless in 90 days is an
achievable goal and provides a rallying
cry to get your team on the same page.
It also gives you a quarterly target to
address and hit while helping to maintain
momentum.
Before you start your 90-day digitization effort, think about the three key steps within your process — capture, workflow, and archiving and retrieval. Each of them benefit from your digitization efforts. When you think about what needs to happen in 90 days to consider the initiative a success, it boils down to setting goals for digitizing three areas:
Information arrives in many ways. Email, faxes, physical mail, web forms and, of course, paper documents are just a few. Each point of entry offers you the opportunity to intelligently capture information so it’s findable and usable in future business processes. Even scanning paper and indexing its content can be fully automated.
“Indexing” is the critical step that transforms documents into manageable information by reading key portions of data and storing each data point as an index value. These index values describe the purpose and content of the document and are ultra-efficient for searching and organizing documents.
The indexing process is significantly improved by software that uses machine learning. Machine learning technology remembers the structure of each document as well as your indexing corrections. Every capture increases the speed, accuracy and reliability of the tool. The more machine learning is used, the less time you spend on manual data entry.
Web forms are another tool to simplify, improve and accelerate data collection. Not only are they instantly available to anyone on any device, but forms provide structure to data, so it can be used to automate information flow.
It’s also important to be able to capture relevant data that sits in your ERP, CRM or other line-of-business software. It is crucial that your document management software and other systems can speak to one another, retrieving data and populating records to keep business information in sync.
The goal is to replace paper shuffling with streamlined digital workflows, with predefined processes for routing, reviewing and approving documents.
Automation enables sharing information with anyone on your team who needs visibility into a workflow process. Every employee responsible for completing a task can view it in the office automation solution. Email updates can be sent to alert employees to new tasks in their work queues. Exceptions and escalations can be configured easily. At a glance, a manager can see what steps are complete and what remains to be done.
By clearly outlining each process in a “best case scenario” — what it would look like if everything went according to plan — you can start designing more efficient digital workflows in your document management system.
Seek solutions with these useful features:
After information is routed via automated workflow, it should be archived in a way that is fast for easy retrieval along with controlled access. If you’ve followed best practices for indexing data at the capture stage, your digital documents will be clearly organized, easily findable and ultimately usable by the business.
Security is a big concern in archiving documents. Not only does strong security and backup measures ensure information recovery in the case of a disaster, but it keeps unwanted readers out and helps meet critical compliance regulations like HIPAA and GDPR.
Ralph Farrow, IT Manager,
Smithfield Food, Ltd.
First get input from your leadership team and
from end users. Then take the time to fully
delve into paper-dependent processes. You
need to understand the source of the pain
before you can administer a cure.
Step 1: Develop the leadership team The most fundamental requirement for a successful initiative is getting buy-in from your organization’s leadership team. Your stakeholders should have the power to push the paperless agenda. Don’t minimize the importance of getting input from end users who often understand more about the day-to-day work than their managers do. You may want to bring in an external office automation professional as part of the leadership team — either a third-party office automation vendor or consultant — to guide the conversation about what is feasible in the short- and long-term.
Step 2: Dig into your business processes The discovery process is essential and requires thoughtful process mapping. Identify key steps, bottlenecks and frustrations by asking your colleagues for input. When you walk through the lifecycle of a specific document or process, ask these questions:
Step 3: Design the solution Once your team has good visibility into your business processes, it’s time to design a paperless solution that addresses the concerns of the leadership team. This design phase determines what software components and features should be used in creating your paperless office.
Decide whether you want to implement a cloud or on-premises solution. Your decision will be based on many factors including the structure of your organization’s IT infrastructure, the potential cost of upgrading your hardware, and the bandwidth and expertise of your IT team.
If you’ve followed the previous three steps and engaged end users in the process, the design phase is when they start asking, “How soon can we install it?” They see the vision, and they want to see its results.
| Small Organizations | Mid-sized Organizations | Large Organizations |
|---|---|---|
| Fast implementation with low cost of services | Modernization of legacy IT environments | Modernization of legacy IT environments |
| Low initial cost | Easy scalability for growth | Highest security and data redundancy |
| Independence for business units | Ability to add new capabilities or features | Elimination of software licensing and upgrade fees |
Step 4: Create awareness and communicate the plan You’ve designed the solution. Next, you need to ensure that the team’s vision for the paperless office is shared with department managers and end users. Creating this awareness is key to effective change management. Even those who hesitate or resist moving away from familiar, paper-based processes will come around.
One good way to spread the word is by sharing videos that give a high-level view of the solution. The goal isn’t to sell users on the technology features, but to create awareness of how office automation takes the drudgery out of daily tasks and helps employees to achieve job-related business goals. Demonstrate progress in regular review meetings. Then schedule a launch party to celebrate your accomplishments.
Lance Bunnell, CFO
Tippecanoe County
Step 5: Deploying your office automation solution Depending on the design, deploying your office automation solution might begin with the creation of a test system or occur in several phases. Test early and often. Testing is often glossed over, but it’s a great way to avoid surprises during the implementation that could cause business disruptions later.
Resolve outstanding issues and demonstrate progress in regular review meetings. This is also the time to begin training IT administrators and power users. Once the system has been deployed, run through one of your processes with sample documents or files, and use this as a training exercise.
Step 6: Training Training time can vary from a few hours for the end users who are assigned to a small number of workflows to one or two days for system administrators and power users. Don’t forget to create ongoing technical documentation. The paperless office is an evolving ecosystem, not something you set up and never think about again. Include discovery findings and design choices as well as system configuration settings. Your documentation should also identify who the system administrators are so that everyone knows whom to contact internally when questions arise.
Ray Hoyt, Title III Project Director,
Tillamook Bay Community College
If you’re ready to take the next step toward becoming a paperless office, partnering with the right vendor is essential to achieving maximum ROI. DocuWare has developed a highly efficient process to to transform your business and improve document handling, workflow and employee collaboration.
