Paperless Office Vs Less Paper Office

The Paperless Office Dream:

Edocuman reckons paperless offices are an unattainable dream, especially considering the relative lack of basic document management processes in many organisations. Information blasts in any organisation are virtually uncontrollable. We print more today than we ever did and we appear to be increasing paper output each day. What has happened to the concept of paperless office? The truth is it simply does not exist. And with an ever increasing mountain of data within every corporation, it means that many records remain very much on paper, along with an unmanaged potpourri of electronic documents that cloud the entire process landscape. It's about time organisations understand the reality — 'only less-paper office exist', and then begin the journey into the world of document management.

Despite computers available on every desktop, more space is required to keep papers in their vicinity. The need is to realise and work towards a 'less-paper office'. And the problem in getting towards less-paper office stems from two basic factors:

1. IT Managers are given wholesome document management responsibilities
2. Inadequate education and knowledge of document management imparted

Look at your conventional photocopying machine. It can now distribute copies digitally from the copier panel to selected PCs in the same manner one would photocopy. The recipient gets the copy in the same way as one receives an email. Why then copy and distribute on paper. But this leads to another problem, many companies are simply converting documents without a clear cut strategy to organise them. Documents are scanned, but they're unstructured and orphaned, without any metadata. The documents in themselves may all look the same once scanned with no quick and easy

way to find out where they really belong.

An Intelligent Less-Paper Office Solution:

The key is allowing users to manage their business process more effectively. So that they can enter data, right at the source, while scanning so that the process of scanning itself becomes an intelligent entry point for data. Intelligent Document Scanning solutions embedded in MFPs with advanced imaging and capture systems are smart enough to add the metadata on the fly while scanning the document. It is this capturing of critical document data that can totally streamline the entire document management process. Intelligent Document Scanning is now possible directly via the MFP, with software embedded into the device itself. The software is smart enough to process the data, apply the appropriate tags and rules, sort and deliver it in appropriate secure collections into DM systems.

PDF/A Considerations:

The scanned file require to be PDF/A compliant. The advantages of archiving and storing documents and records in a PDF/A format are many. The primary reason being, PDF/A is an ISO 19005-1:2005 standard that is guaranteed to open independent of hardware and software over 100 years and more. Other image formats such as TIFF, JPG etc does not hold any such guarantee. Further, if PDF/A files are properly created, using Adobe's free Reader it possible to read information held inside the Document Information Dictionary (DiD) thus make the files legally compliant. Capture workflows are built around PDF/A scanning applications for Legal Hold purposes.

To sum up. A less paper office surely exists and to get there without PDF/A the paperless office dream will shatter!

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