GOING PAPERLESS ?

[Anonymous]

http://thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2010/4/6/lifefocus/5926634&sec=lifefocus
GOING PAPERLESS
How do we stop ourselves from hitting that ‘Print’
key?
BELIEVE it or not, the idea of a
paperless office has been mooted since 1975. In a Business Week article
published on June 30 of that year, titled The Office Of The Future, it
was proclaimed that by 1990, “most record-handling will be
electronic.”The article went on to analyse how automated systems would
revolutionise the way offices worked. George E. Pake, then head of
Xerox’s Research Centre in California, accurately predicted that by
1995, “there will be a TV-display terminal with keyboard sitting on his
desk.”“I’ll be able to call up documents from my files on screen, or by
pressing a button,” he was quoted as saying. “I can get my mail or any
messages. I don’t know how much hard copy I’ll want in this world.” (The
article is still available online. There is also a George E. Pake prize
today, awarded annually by the American Physical Society in recognition
of outstanding work by physicists).Big challenge: A worker sorting
waste paper at a recycling plant in Bukit Mertajam, Penang. We still
junk plenty of paper each day.Those prophetic proclamations have one
flaw though. Today’s offices are no more paperless than they were back
in 1975, albeit the word “less” is still applicable because some offices
do admittedly use less paper today compared to back then. Today, in the
United States alone, businesses use more than a trillion pages of
office paper each year, according to market research firm InfoTrends.In
an article by efficiency and productivity expert K.J. McCorry, it is
stated that the US uses almost 3.7 million tonnes of copy paper every
year. The paper industry is one of the world’s biggest contributors of
greenhouse gases, felling 900 million trees annually. A study by Xerox
showed that 45% of office paper that end up in the bin were discarded on
the day they were printed.

The authors of the book The Myth Of
The Paperless Office, Abigail Sellen and Richard Harper, found that even
when digital versions of documents are available, workers would still
use paper versions 89% of the time.So, is the concept of a paperless
office still a myth, or has there been a steady progress towards zero
use of paper?“I think it’s still in the process,” says Christopher Reid,
Asia Pacific vice-president and general manager of InfoPrint Solutions.
“It’s a real challenge for people to get there but there are offices
that have really been able to reduce paper, and they get pretty close to
paperless. But I think they’re few and far between.“I don’t think it’s a
myth but it’s a big challenge, both technically and also because of the
kind of commitment that it takes from the senior management of an
enterprise to be able to transition to a paperless environment, whether
that is in a healthcare, corporate or manufacturing environment.”Reid
notes that printing has been around for the last 500 years, and it is
going to be a while before it goes away. “That’s because some kinds of
operations have to print,” he says. “They have to print labels, tags,
invoices, bills. And in the office environment people still prefer to
have a Word file in hardcopy so that they can carry it around, make
notes and file things away.”A good way to cut down paper usage is to
print on both sides of the paper.

IBM Malaysia chief technologist
Lee Yu Kit says the main point that everyone should look at is how
going paperless would benefit offices and organisations. He says
document management systems were always about better productivity and
processes, and not eliminating paper per se.“‘Paperless’ is not an
all-or-nothing proposition, so we are talking about reducing the use of
paper, not eliminating it,” he says. He adds that the tools for reducing
paper consumption are already available, so it is not an issue of
technology.

Lee Chin Guan, Fuji Xerox senior manager of office
product and solution marketing, concurs: “For us it is not ‘paperless’
but ‘paper-less,’ which is to fully use paper and not let any go to
waste. Businesses can’t run without paper, because of several things
such as compliance issues, the business process and our Malaysian
business environment.“How do we optimise the use of paper? A lot of
times, it is not about how much we can save on usage, but how much we
can save on wastage.”

Legal issues
Chin Guan says that in
Japan, there are laws pertaining to digital documents where such
documents are deemed legally valid, while in Malaysia such laws are
still not fully in place. Businesses still have to file away paper
documents for legal purposes for at least seven years.In the US, on June
30, 2000, digital and electronic signatures became legally valid under
the the ESIGN Act approved by then-president Bill Clinton. The ESIGN Act
is largely seen as eliminating the final hurdle to the paperless office
concept. Yet, many people are reportedly still reluctant to accept
e-signatures. In fact, a lot of us still prefer to read something on
paper than on a computer screen.“But there are offices where moving to
zero paper is absolutely possible and is the right thing to do,” says
Reid.“And people are starting to move. But you’re going to have
environments where you can’t transition everything to an electronic
signature. For example, you have customers in rural locations who have
to sign on paper.”A study by Xerox shows that 45% of office paper that
end up in the bin were discarded the day they were printed.

Reid
illustrates one example of a healthcare provider in the US. “It was
very, very painful to get information because they had to go down to
their archives and pull out their records from the last patient visit,
and when they got questions, they needed a couple of days to get back to
you,” says Reid.“And that changed completely when they scanned all
those documents and provided all the nurses and doctors with tablet PCs
so that they have access to all the documents instantaneously.”

Yu
Kit says some users are not comfortable with computers, such as the
older generation who may prefer paper. But he believes that will change
as a generation of “digital natives” grows up and joins the
workforce.“Nevertheless, the change of processes from paper to
electronic will also entail long periods of time to adapt, especially
for older employees,” says Yu Kit. “For organisations which are not
automated, such as very small businesses, the initial costs of setting
up may be daunting, so it has to be asked what the benefits are for them
to go paperless. Doing so simply for the sake of reducing paper use is
not economically viable in most situations.”

In contrast to these
views, a recent report by JP Morgan states that going paperless is more
than possible. It presented as proof how it introduced digital
processes and helped 25,000 clients eliminate more than 24 million paper
documents from their operations within 18 months. It also stated that
firms can save more than US$500,000 (RM1.6mil) in annual costs by moving
towards a paperless environment.“Many businesses are motivated by cost
reduction, process efficiency, service improvement and competitive
difference,” says Yu Kit. “All these are incentives to do with less
paper. If it became very much more expensive to use paper, people would
use it less. Organisations are not equal. For a very small business or a
home business, does it make sense to become paperless?”

Cut the
paper trail
Some businesses have other reasons for going paperless.
DiGi Telecommunications, for instance, has an ongoing Deep Green
campaign, part of which involves the reduction of paper
consumption.Through various processes and also the use of multi-function
devices, the company has managed to reduce usage from 2.4 million
sheets of A4-sized paper in 2008 to 1.7 million sheets last year.To use
the multi-function devices, DiGi requires its employees to log in or
provide some form of identification before use. This tracks how much
paper is used by each individual. Paper ordering has also been made as
part of the key performance index of the corporate administration.

Each
employee is given limited storage space in the form of a locker. And
with the office practising open seating for all, employees have very
little space to keep their things, hence they would be discouraged from
printing too much.“We started the three-week Feel The Heat campaign in
2008,” says Philip Ling of DiGi’s corporate responsibility and corporate
affairs. “We created a lot of awareness. We showed movies, brought in
experts. Basically, we revealed how many trees would be saved every time
we don’t print.”

However, for the individual, our habits are
still very much tied to paper. What incentive is there for an individual
to reduce her or his paper consumption? Ever since our school days,
everything has been done with paper, from textbooks and exercise books
to examination papers. How do we wean ourselves off paper usage?“What we
found is that the incentive works for a little while, and causes a
portion of customers to move to electronic only, for example with the
telcos or with bank statements,” says Reid.

DiGi, for instance,
has introduced e-billing and customers who want paper bills will have to
pay RM3.But Reid says: “The challenge that we found in our research is
that when there is a problem in their bill, or if they have concerns
about what they’re being billed for, consumers will turn to their
printed output very quickly. So they have a document that they can file
away.”Says Yu Kit: “For individuals who work in offices, a lot of
motivation comes from company policy and cultural mores, so peer
practice is a big influence. Similarly, individuals can make a big
difference by using paper judiciously and influencing their peers.”

But
Yu Kit thinks disincentives can work just as well, for example charging
departments for printer and paper usage.Reid says there has been a
growth in paper usage in countries such as China and India, and other
emerging markets. “As the economy grows, as telcos and banks start to
provide more capabilities, they need to print more documents to
communicate with their customers. But in countries like the US or
Europe, it’s very different. You see an already very advanced
document-based workflow. We are seeing flatlines in many cases in terms
of total pages produced.”

Chin Guan also foresees that paper
usage will continue to grow in the coming years. According to estimates,
by 2025, there will be 190 times more information going through the
Internet. With all this information, people will be printing even more.
But he remains hopeful that technology can reduce wastage.“Technology
can also change people’s habits,” says Chin Guan. “When we show them
that technology can help them in their work, they might change. If we
start thinking green, eventually we will achieve something.”
http://www.tonernews.com

[Author]

April 11, 2010 at 5:15 PM