Paper productivity gains.

It won’t come as a surprise to anyone that better control of your business documents is a sensible strategy for any business. We know that, it’s fairly obvious but do we really understand all of the benefits or indeed the costs of not managing paper.

Sometimes we just can’t see the wood for the trees!

 

Paper issues may appear trivial to business owners and that's because we’re so used to being so swamped in paper that we don’t see or understand the negative implication that poor management of paper can have. We’re complacent about paper because it’s always been there.

According to a survey by YouGov, the UK’s small and medium-sized enterprises waste more than £42.2 million per day in revenues looking for documents, something that could easily be remedied by creating a ‘paperless office’. Despite this, 65% of UK SMEs have still not taken this step.

 

All businesses can struggle with productivity, an area where small gains are huge victories. Big business have the power to make significant infrastructure investments and also have people focused purely on process improvement.

Smaller businesses however have the potential for much bigger productivity gains which can be delivered much quicker due to their agile nature. Productivity improvement does not have to come with big financial investment, smaller businesses should focus on small process improvements and therefore managing paper better has to be top of the pile.

Make sure you set the right expectation, work towards a "Less Paper" office rather than a "Paper Less" office - isolate each paper process and improve it. Document scanning and management has got to be one of the easiest ways to introduce process improvement.  

The paper burden in Small Business.

Sound familiar?

There’s paper everywhere but I can never find the information I need. Come on what have I done with it! Argh...I must have thrown it away, or maybe I left it at home. I’ll have to go through this pile again! It must be in the filing cabinet, maybe it’s in my car. Really guys how much time do you have for this!

Scanning Paper

It really isn’t rocket science but please do take some care, you need to have a strategy! If you just scan paper you’ll be moving the problem from being a visible burden into an invisible and potentially disastrous situation.

So what should I do!

Set aside an hour or two, grab a cup of coffee and think! Think about the paper that you have now. Where does it come from, what do you do with it, how long do you really need to keep, but most importantly does it actually have any value?

Right what now?

Don’t try and fix the problem all in one go, you lived with this for long enough so give yourself time to get your strategy right! Start with the really important stuff.  Think small steps. 

I’m ready what do I do now?

Slow down, you’re not ready yet. You have to spend some money, it’s not for free. The good news however is that it doesn’t have to cost the earth. There are many different products and solutions but to make it easy here are two choices.

Simple

Yes, this will be for most of you, as you don’t have time for complex and you are the IT department. Buy a ScanSnap, it’s a full solution. Don’t take my word for it (SPOILER ALERT – I do have an interest here) go to AMAZON in any country and read the reviews.

Slightly more Complex

Ok, first of all set aside time for some real research. Assuming you already have a computer you need to buy just two things, a scanner (don’t buy a flatbed scanner – life is far too short for that) and some Document Management Software. Relax, it doesn’t have to be too hard you’re not an intrepid explorer going where no man has gone before but you do have to invest some time here. If you’re in a paper intensive line of work, accountancy, legal, medicine there are plenty of packages available that are customised for your environment, we’ve just narrowed the search considerably already. If not then google is your friend!

Little Steps again.

Whichever way you decide to go, don’t forget small steps. Focus on developing your strategy for different types of documents. Why don’t you start with your expenses and receipts then move on to customer correspondence, Rome wasn’t built in a day!

Take the first little step today.

The FBI goes paperless

Well, it's only taken 12 years and $600m but finally the FBI has introduced electronic case records for all it's 36,000 employees. That's a lot less paper and I'm sure a more effective use of data, beware criminals the FBI have become even more efficient.

Sentinel, the agency’s all-digital system, features a web browser-style user interface that allows agents to enter and review information about cases or suspects. Agents can do quick searches to see if one of their cases has any similarities to other cases, an improvement which should speed up investigations. Additionally, agents can electronically sign documents using an identification badge reader.

Certain elements of Sentinel have been in use by FBI agents for months, but the agency made the full switch to digital filing last month. The software sees about 20,000 users a day.

“The deployment of Sentinel is an important step forward for FBI’s information technology,” said FBI Director Robert S. Mueller in an e-mailed statement.

Check out their press release: http://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-announces-deployment-of-sentinel

Disaster recovery – have you got everything covered?

Guess what, paper has no inherent provision for disaster recovery! Whilst many organisations have spent considerable time and effort planning for the worst the “elephant in the room” appears to be paper records and paper based processes.

So, whilst in many cases organisations might claim that they can have key personnel functioning in an offsite replica of their business with virtualised applications and recovered electronic content very few have made any contingency for paper.

The cold hard fact is that if a paper record is destroyed by fire, flood or any other natural disaster that it is the end of that record, there exists no recovery point.

One common miss-conception is that by storing important paper records in an off-site paper warehouse is in some way a disaster recovery policy for paper. This is totally erroneous as whilst many of these vast paper warehouses have very careful climate controlled areas with state of the art fire deterrents they are not unassailable. You may recall an incident in London some years back when fire damage destroyed millions of records at a well known paper storage business.

I’m sure that citing a fire or flood is not a legally acceptable reason for being unable to disclose a record, and in our litigious society that can amount to significant loss.

The truth is that if you have important content on paper that’s not backed up or managed in some sort of EDMS (Electronic Document Management System) you cannot really have a complete disaster recovery plan in place.

Content is content whether it’s paper or electronic, if it’s important you need to make provisions for it just in case the worst should happen.

Physical Protection:

2 out of 5 companies who experience disaster are out of business within 5yrs if they even if they have a plan(Gartner)

Business suffering incapacitating disaster with no DRP (Disaster Recovery Plan):

Ø  only 43% resume operations

Ø  of 43%, 29% still in business in 2 years

Ø  total of 71% out of business in 2 years

(Contingency Planning Research)

Minimise the risk of paper and convert to electronic content where replication can be managed.