Paperless office

Author
Discussion

NickNJ

Original Poster:

128 posts

181 months

Monday 23rd March 2015
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Anyone experience of this?

i remain to be convinced this will work..,

Type R Tom

3,859 posts

148 months

Monday 23rd March 2015
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Depending on what you do, most offices never go truly paperless as things often have to be printed. It really depends on who you work with, for example are scanned documents acceptable? I generally find the hardest people to change are the older colleagues, who perhaps are a little less computer competent or are set in there ways. Loads of people in my place still print loads of paper work and keep it on file; problem is we just don’t have the space to store it.

Vaud

50,289 posts

154 months

Monday 23rd March 2015
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I have printed 5 pages this year. All contract related to be signed, scanned and returned. So yes, it is (broadly) possible. At work we are considering getting rid of our printer fleet as they get so little use (aside from contracts and tenders that need a formal physical submission)

slipstream 1985

12,127 posts

178 months

Tuesday 24th March 2015
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It's a bloody nuisance. 50 different log ins and passwords for every different system then years of different peoples filing and file naming to find the document you want. Waiting for epicly slow pc systems to load etc. I have one of every paper document i need in a folder hidden from everyone else. The time i save is massive.

Type R Tom

3,859 posts

148 months

Tuesday 24th March 2015
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Oh yeah, when inevitably the servers go down you just sit and stare at the wall / drink coffee.

anonymous-user

53 months

Tuesday 24th March 2015
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slipstream 1985 said:
It's a bloody nuisance. 50 different log ins and passwords for every different system then years of different peoples filing and file naming to find the document you want. Waiting for epicly slow pc systems to load etc. I have one of every paper document i need in a folder hidden from everyone else. The time i save is massive.
I'd suggest the problem lies in you IT infrastructure not being for for purpose.

Vaud

50,289 posts

154 months

Tuesday 24th March 2015
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garyhun said:
I'd suggest the problem lies in you IT infrastructure not being for for purpose.
Quite. Single sign on gets rid of the password issue. A management vision seeing paper/process cost savings and then not investing in the IT aspect... at a wild guess.

rog007

5,748 posts

223 months

Tuesday 24th March 2015
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Paperless is probably some way off, if achievable at all; paper lite however should be here now. It does as others have stated require a forward thinking leadership with the requisite IT and associated working practices in place. Without that leadership the most however, change may be very slow.

Vaud

50,289 posts

154 months

Tuesday 24th March 2015
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rog007 said:
Paperless is probably some way off, if achievable at all; paper lite however should be here now. It does as others have stated require a forward thinking leadership with the requisite IT and associated working practices in place. Without that leadership the most however, change may be very slow.
To give you an example we have:

Paperless pay slips
All HR done through SAP portal
Company cars, etc - online
All employee benefits online.

So if I was a new joiner today, I would have my written contract and one KPI letter a year to sign - and everything else is paper free. I don't have a desk, filing cabinet or easy access to a printer. I can't remember the last time I received any post other than flyers.

ATG

20,485 posts

271 months

Tuesday 24th March 2015
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I scribble the odd word or diagram on a note pad. That's the only paper that crosses my desk. Nobody announced "we're going paperless". It's just a natural evolution. With halfway decent IT, no one chooses to build a process around bits of paper. So over time you naturally use it less and less. I remember when I first joined I was impressed with the printing infrastructure; you walk up to any printer, show it your security card and it'll print your queued documents. Never use it.

Autopilot

1,298 posts

183 months

Tuesday 24th March 2015
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I've implemented quite a few EDRMS (Electronic Document & Records Management System) projects. All the projects I've run, the term 'less paper' gets adopted rather than paperless.

One of the first issues to overcome is the fact that as soon as anybody says 'paperless' people panic and starting mud slinging about why they can't be without paper and why it won't work. I have never run a project where it has caused a ban on printing and think most people understand that. The thing is, a proper 'paperless' office isn't just about environmental issues. Digitalisation of processes that are typically analogue can make a huge difference to an organisation.

I've run numerous Government projects (Planning, Building Control etc etc) where using 'paperless' systems has transformed the way the organisation operates. Electronic documents stay electronic but can be made available online immediately, paper docs (even A0 plans etc) can be scanned and hey presto you have a case file online which was previously a huge manual task to make available. Any correspondence can also be captured and stored with a file and all you'd need to know what was application it belonged to.

I worked with a few planning officers who used mobile working and Document Management so didn't ever really need to come in to the office as any post, letters, appeals, revised plans etc were immediately available to them (subject to scanning speeds etc).

Consultation can then be done online (saving hundreds in postage costs and large scale printing), the list goes on.

With regards to legal status of scanned documents, BIP008 is in place to support that.

Type R Tom

3,859 posts

148 months

Tuesday 24th March 2015
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Autopilot said:
I've implemented quite a few EDRMS (Electronic Document & Records Management System) projects. All the projects I've run, the term 'less paper' gets adopted rather than paperless.

One of the first issues to overcome is the fact that as soon as anybody says 'paperless' people panic and starting mud slinging about why they can't be without paper and why it won't work. I have never run a project where it has caused a ban on printing and think most people understand that. The thing is, a proper 'paperless' office isn't just about environmental issues. Digitalisation of processes that are typically analogue can make a huge difference to an organisation.

I've run numerous Government projects (Planning, Building Control etc etc) where using 'paperless' systems has transformed the way the organisation operates. Electronic documents stay electronic but can be made available online immediately, paper docs (even A0 plans etc) can be scanned and hey presto you have a case file online which was previously a huge manual task to make available. Any correspondence can also be captured and stored with a file and all you'd need to know what was application it belonged to.

I worked with a few planning officers who used mobile working and Document Management so didn't ever really need to come in to the office as any post, letters, appeals, revised plans etc were immediately available to them (subject to scanning speeds etc).

Consultation can then be done online (saving hundreds in postage costs and large scale printing), the list goes on.

With regards to legal status of scanned documents, BIP008 is in place to support that.
With a drive to save money, a lot of council offices are getting smaller. Therefore less space for staff (even with cuts in numbers) and paperwork. Paper has to be reduced along with WFH etc.

Autopilot

1,298 posts

183 months

Tuesday 24th March 2015
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Type R Tom said:
Depending on what you do, most offices never go truly paperless as things often have to be printed. It really depends on who you work with, for example are scanned documents acceptable? I generally find the hardest people to change are the older colleagues, who perhaps are a little less computer competent or are set in there ways. Loads of people in my place still print loads of paper work and keep it on file; problem is we just don’t have the space to store it.
I worked with a Building Control officer who was well past 70 so was always going to be bit of a pain to try to convert. He worked part time and most of what he dealt with was in the area where he lived. He only came in to the office to look at paper work and understand his workload, so had to drive out his way each time he came in. He finally had a light bulb moment and realised that his digital case file looked exactly the same as the paper version he kept, in fact, the digital one was normally a few days ahead of paper. That removed the need for him to come in to the office.

Autopilot

1,298 posts

183 months

Tuesday 24th March 2015
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Type R Tom said:
With a drive to save money, a lot of council offices are getting smaller. Therefore less space for staff (even with cuts in numbers) and paperwork. Paper has to be reduced along with WFH etc.
One of the key drivers for a project I've managed was that they wanted to sell the building and couldn't take their old files with them but were required to keep them.

quinny100

920 posts

185 months

Wednesday 25th March 2015
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Electronic document management can bring huge benefits to a business. EDM done badly is worse than paper!

The most significant misconception I've come across is that capture of documents (scanning/indexing) doesn't much matter and anyone can do it. The first thing is that document capture with an electronic system doesn't usually save you anything at all - in fact it can take longer and require more people in some cases. All of the value comes with the time saved in every subsequent retrieval.

Secondly, managers eyes light up when they think I can sideline the PITA in the admin team and tie them up doing scanning and indexing all day, finally getting them doing something useful. This is a terrible idea. If the scanning and indexing of documents into the system isn't done properly, nobody up the chain will be able to find anything and it will very quickly degenerate into a complete mess. They will blame the system for documents disappearing into a black hole, confidence will disappear and people will find their own ways of circumventing the system.

You need to define your filing structure in the electronic system and make sure everyone understands it. If you're having to change this frequently, you're doing something wrong and should look at it again.

Be careful allowing people to categorise things very generically - eg. Email. I've worked on a project where the management required that Email was a document type (against my advice). I had terrible problems getting some staff to understand that just because something arrived via email, blindly filing it as an email is a really bad idea. 3 months down the line they've got problems, lots of supplier invoices coming in via email and most were filed as email, we can't find the invoices and accounts are going up the wall!

The quality of EDM Project Manager can make a massive difference to the success of a project. EDM projects need to get far more involved with the mechanics of specific business processes than a lot of IT projects, and you need to be flexible to making changes to your processes rather than trying to get the EDM system to fit a process that has no real logic to it. I've seen very good IT PM's take on an EDM project and get in a bit of a mess. Get and check references from previous implementations for both the system and the PM you are being assigned.

Remember that it's a massive change for the staff, and the benefits increase over time. I went back to an organisation I did a project for back in 2007 recently. They struggled a little at first because they had to run a hybrid system for a couple of years as they didn't have the budget to capture all of their recent historic files in one go. Now they've got their last 20 years of documents available on their desktop, tablet or homeworking laptop and can retrieve anything they want within a minute and even the most resistant guy at the time admitted he'd never go back. They had a whole basement and off site storage facility dedicated to file storage which has now gone. They managed to move their 70 staff to a new building in 3 days with little loss of productivity because the key people could work effectively at home. This would have been unthinkable if they'd still been relying on paper files.

Autopilot

1,298 posts

183 months

Wednesday 25th March 2015
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quinny100 said:
You need to define your filing structure in the electronic system and make sure everyone understands it. If you're having to change this frequently, you're doing something wrong and should look at it again.

Be careful allowing people to categorise things very generically - eg. Email. I've worked on a project where the management required that Email was a document type (against my advice). I had terrible problems getting some staff to understand that just because something arrived via email, blindly filing it as an email is a really bad idea. 3 months down the line they've got problems, lots of supplier invoices coming in via email and most were filed as email, we can't find the invoices and accounts are going up the wall!
If people were blindly filing invoices attached to emails, how were the intended recipients meant to know there was some 'post' waiting for them that required action?


Vaud

50,289 posts

154 months

Wednesday 25th March 2015
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quinny100 said:
Electronic document management can bring huge benefits to a business. EDM done badly is worse than paper!
Good points, all well made.

quinny100

920 posts

185 months

Wednesday 25th March 2015
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Autopilot said:
If people were blindly filing invoices attached to emails, how were the intended recipients meant to know there was some 'post' waiting for them that required action?
They were setting the document type to "Email" for any document that arrived via email, rather than to a type that accurately reflected the content of the document. They were still routed through the workflow element of the system for somebody to action. Some people had to good sense to change the doc type at this point, others didn't.

The problem came to a head later when the accounts people wanted to view all the invoices received between 2 dates, only this didn't work because many of them were stored with a type of "Email" and not "Invoice".

davepoth

29,395 posts

198 months

Wednesday 25th March 2015
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It's unrealistic for many offices at least in the short term, but it's a good target to work towards whenever you are engineering processes. I've got a few customers at work who have always requested to have original documents couriered to them for no good reason other than that was what we'd always done. That had been going on for years, and when I was handed the customers I began to nudge them towards electronic documents instead. It's a little step, but everything helps.

bigandclever

13,750 posts

237 months

Wednesday 25th March 2015
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I did my degree dissertation on 'the paperless office' 25 years ago, the broad conclusion of which was that it's not truly workable, irrespective of technology. Can't remember much else laugh