Our guest “8 things”
blogger today is Ken Neal, a Certified Enterprise Content Management
Practitioner and Director of Corporate Communications, for Océ Business Services.
Océ Business Services provides document management and electronic discovery services to law
firms, corporations, and the public sector. Océ Business Services is a leading
international provider of document process outsourcing services and technology
to businesses and the public sector.
To learn more, visit http://www.obs-innovation.com.
Ken can be reached at kenneth.neal@oce.com.
If you have not yet visited AIIM’s Green Microsite,
it’s a good source of information for best practices related to Green ECM.
8 Document Management
Practices that are Cost-Effective and Eco-Friendly
As leading economic indicators
continue to signal a global economic slowdown, companies are looking for
effective steps to take – such as lowering costs and streamlining operations –
in order to weather the storm and achieve a competitive edge in the eventual
recovery. At the same time, recent industry research shows that businesses also
want to be more environmentally responsible.
There are several document
management practices that can help companies reach both their environmental and
cost-reduction goals. From the sustainability perspective, these practices can
significantly reduce the use of paper, thereby saving trees, gas in shipping
the paper, physical space to store it, and halting the eventual destruction of
many files that end up in a landfill. According to the Environmental Paper Network, “If,
for example, the United States cut its office paper use by roughly 10 percent,
or 540,000 tons, greenhouse gases would fall by 1.6 million tons. This is the
equivalent of taking 280,000 cars off the road for a year.”
Here are eight guidelines highlighting
document management practices in the office that can benefit the environment
and reduce costs:
1. The workgroup
alternative
To the extent possible,
replacing personal desktop printers with workgroup MFPs (multifunction
peripherals that combine print/copy/scan/fax functionality in one machine)
shared by departments can have a strong positive impact. One financial services
company replaced 1,100 copiers and printers and 1,000 fax machines with 400
MFPs. The initiative eliminated 1,700 machines that no longer consume resources
based on their manufacture, transportation, operation, maintenance, and
eventual disposal.
2. Adopt scanning
practices
Instead of
copying and storing physical documents, organizations can scan and store
electronically. Employees can retain digital copies that they can distribute
electronically, and at the same time avoid accumulating files filled with
paper.
As a conservative estimate, scanning can reduce paper consumption by one
to three percent. In a recent industry survey, senior executives involved in
document management indicated that document scanning has a high impact across
the greatest range of business goals that include reducing costs, increasing
competitive advantage, enhancing regulatory compliance, and improving customer
service.
3. Default to duplex
Most multi-page documents
don’t require the text to be printed on one side of the page. Newspapers,
magazines and books use both sides (duplex printing). With effective fleet
management it is possible to change office practices and make duplex printing
of multi-page documents the norm. This can potentially decrease paper use by up
to 50 percent.
4. Eliminate printing banner
pages
A banner page
is the extra page that prints before an employee’s file prints with username
and machine name information. Gartner’s research estimates that organizations
can reduce their consumables cost by up to 20 percent by eliminating banner
pages from office print jobs. Banner pages can represent up to a quarter of
pages printed for some typical office print jobs. A 1,000 person organization
could cut up 1.6 million pages and save $33,500 per year by eliminating banner
page printing (“Cost Cutting Initiatives for Office Printing,” Sharon McNee and
Ken Weilerstein, Feb. 2008.)
5. Bulk up
Buying paper and toner in
bulk can reduce transportation, packaging, and storage resources. Buying in
bulk also often results in cost savings.
6. Leverage “smart”
technologies
Enterprises can use MFP “smart”
technologies such as Personal Mail Box, Fax-from-Desktop, Scan-to-Email/File
Folder, and Document Routing in order to decrease paper and chemicals used in
printing. This can reduce paper usage by up to three percent.
7. Implement user authentication
With as many
as one in 10 documents sent to the printer and uncollected or sent again before
collection to correct user errors, enterprises could reduce ad hoc print costs
by up to 10 percent by implementing a PIN authentication system.
8. Put more text on each
page
Paper usage can be reduced
by changing a few default settings that will result in more text on each page.
For example, in MS Word, you can go to “File,” then to “Page Setup” and set the
margins to accommodate more text. Compared to the normal settings, this could
use up to 14 percent less paper. Additionally, when printing, you can reduce
font size to 10 point to decrease the amount of paper required.
Some additional posts that may be of interest:
- Some musings about the future of ECM
- 8 things you need to know about using ECM for regulatory compliance
- 8 things small businesses need to know about document management
- 8 things you need to know about content classification and ECM
- 10 fast facts about document management
