Wednesday 14th August, 2013

A new research report by AIIM, Winning the Paper Wars finds that companies can reap greater financial benefits by incorporating paper-free projects into their business improvement initiatives, and yet adoption of these processes has been very slow.

According to the report 74 percent of survey respondents have business improvement campaigns underway that would benefit from paper-free processes, but surprisingly only 24 percent have a specific policy designed to eliminate paper from their business.

Many companies are going paper-free as a result of the increased use of mobile technologies by employees, as well as the fact that having only electronic documents helps with compliance and audit regulations.

The report examines the benefits of pursuing a paper-free work environment, reasons why adoption has been slow, and which processes are the most effective for digitisation. Even though companies can improve response time to customer requests and increase productivity, most organisations have moved at a slow pace when it comes to adopting electronic workflow technologies.

In fact, among the 562 survey respondents, (47 percent) of organisations have made only five percent progress towards updating processes that could be paper-free. Worse, 19 percent said they have actually increased the use of paper. Legal requirements for paper copies and physical signatures is given as one of the main justifications, despite the fact that this is generally not the case.

While demands for reduced operating costs and increased worker productivity are obvious motivators for paper-free initiatives, the research also reveals that the growth in teleworking and use of mobile devices by workers in the field has dramatically increased the need for electronic access to all business content. Using capture on mobile devices can also trigger back-office processes immediately, and cut out the paper-chain between field workers, branch offices and head office.

"Our research confirms that companies that adopt paper-free business processes benefit by reducing costs, improving customer service, and raising worker productivity,” said AIIM President John Mancini. “But we’ve also learned that executives are still not comfortable using electronic signatures and electronic documents, even though they are 100 percent admissible in a court of law, when it comes to legal issues and audit trails. On the flip side, we’re seeing that many companies are adopting mobile technologies for their dispersed workforce which is helping to advance the idea of the paper-free office."

Two-thirds of those adopting paper-free processes report a payback within 18 months and 50 percent see payback in a 12-month period. Respondents felt that corporate spending on paperless technologies will increase over the next 12 months particularly in the area of data capture for mobile devices.