AIIM: Paperless Office Still A Pipe Dream As Mobile Capture Market Gets Set To Explode

Despite the growing number of technologies that facilitate easy, secure document capture using centralized, disparate and even mobile devices, the move towards the paperless office and processes is tediously slow. According to new research from AIIM, only 5% of the processes that could feasibly cut paper out of the workflow in paper-intensive organizations have been put in place. 

Enterprises Lack Capture Strategies

The findings were published in a new Industry Watch paper entitled "Winning the Paper Wars — capture the content and mobilize the process troops," based on responses from 455 AIIM community members over the course of May and June of this year.

It shows that while many organizations are now in the habit of systematically scanning their own files and documents and converting them into electronic formats that can be added to enterprise workflows, they are still struggling to manage documents that enter the enterprise from the outside.

According to AIIM, these documents create major headaches for most enterprises — even more so than records management — by bogging down enterprise processes and restricting customer response times and access to customer requests.

Even with the speed and agility that mobile capture brings, enterprises appear reluctant to move to paper-free processes. One of the telling figures that the report offers on this is that while 74% of respondents have processes that would be more effective without paper, only 24% have a specific strategy for creating a paperless workplace.

Paper-Free Business Initiatives and Drivers

While we have seen in many technology areas — especially in customer experience management —increasing the response times to customers is one of principal driving forces behind the adoption of new technologies, this doesn’t appear to have impacted on the deployement of capture technologies.

While 74% of survey respondents said that they are responsible for developing paperless strategies, or with building environmentally friendly work places, only 24% were able to say that they had specific strategies in mind.

AIIM interprets this as an encouraging sign that enterprises are beginning to place paper reduction high on their business agendas, but the fact that there is still such a high rate of paper usage despite the obvious advantages of cutting it out indicates that something other than lack of planning is holding the transition process back.

AIIM suggests that additional regulatory requirements coupled with a lack of direct management involvement in the process may be where the problem lies.

Drivers and  Enterprise Issues

There are a number of practical issues around the use of paper in processes. Paper-based processes are difficult to manage, close to impossible to access remotely,  and prone not just to delays but also to human handling errors.

The research also identified a number of other issues that should be added to the mix including difficulties around version control, lack of disaster recovery and the increasing costs associated with paper.

However, despite considerable work and development of technologies in the area, signatures or e-signatures, appear to be the principal obstacles. Enterprises, the research shows, fear that electronic signatures may not be legally acceptable and it is this that is one of the main factors holding the process back.

However, this should not really be an issue given the sophistication of many of the e-signature technologies available now. On top of this, AIIM points out that the legalities around e-signatures have been standardized in most jurisdictions for 10 years already, and in some for as long as 20 years.

Needless to say, when the figures were broken down by department across enterprises, the legal departments were the principal objectors to e-signatures, although even there AIIM says there has been considerable progress.

The figures show that while 26% of those surveyed in legal departments were against their use, 37% favored them. Elsewhere, while financial managers and administrators are also against using e-signatures, C-level executives were four times more likely to be in favor of paper-free processes.

From this, AIIM concludes that for paperless offices and processes to become a reality, C-level executives need to become proactive in promoting them. Without that C-level push, AIIM says, the paperless office will not happen. However, there are a number of other issues that need to be and can be dealt with now. These include:

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com