How Is The Paperless Office Initiative Faring?

By Christine Kern, contributing writer

In a new AIIM report, “Paper Wars 2014 — Update from the Battlefield,” researchers examined how well organizations are faring in the progress towards paper-free processes.

According to the report, 68 percent of organizations “believe business-at-the-speed-of-paper will soon be ‘unacceptable,’” and almost half of businesses say that the biggest single productivity improvement would be to remove paper. Despite these perceptions, paper consumption is still actually increasing for one in five (21 percent) organizations.

“Reducing paper use has a tangible impact on business, from improved customer service to increased productivity,” says AIIM president, John Mancini in a press release. “Business-at-the-speed-of-paper simply isn’t compatible with the modern digital enterprise and while we can’t eliminate paper altogether, we can all be much smarter about using less.”

The AIIM report was designed to demonstrate just how much waste exists and to propose how organizations can improve their ROI by reducing excess consumption.

The report found that 60 percent of organizations that have already committed to reducing paper achieved ROI on their paper-free projects within 12 months, and within 18 months, that percentage jumped to 75 percent. Most significantly, going paper free allowed organizations to provide faster customer response and increased productivity.

One of the largest sources of paper consumption comes from printing personal copies to take to a meeting or to add a signature, with 50 percent of those surveyed saying they did this. Employees also said that they use printed copies for reading offline or out of the office (50 percent), and to edit (45 percent).

When asked why such paper consumption remains in their organizations, 47 percent of respondents cited a lack of management initiatives, followed by the perceived need for physical signatures (44 percent). Another factor is ignorance of paper-free options. Of all departments, legal and finance remain the most resistant to transitioning to a paper-free workplace, followed by HR and administration.

Other key findings in the AIIM report include:

• On average, 35 percent of scanned documents are unchanged from printer to scanner, while 16 percent of scanned documents are photocopied before scanning.
• On average, although 44 percent of invoices arrive as electronic, 59 percent of them will end up as a paper copy, mostly printed prior to manual processing (39 percent).
• 44 percent of organizations are only 10 percent towards their goal of paper-free processes, while 23 percent have yet to achieve any, including 22 percent of the very largest organizations.
• Two thirds of respondents recognize the importance of mobile devices for content access and data capture.

“Millions of unnecessary sheets of paper are printed every single day and businesses of all sizes are seeing the office cluttered and their processes slowed,” concludes Mancini. “The fact of the matter is we need to use less paper. The paperless office will probably never arrive but achieving paper-free processes is a realistic goal for any business. There are many ways to capture, manage and store information digitally."