*NEWS*FOLLOW THE PAPERLESS TRAIL

[Anonymous]

Follow the paperless trail
Companies are finding digital paper more efficient, secure, and economical than the tree-pulp-based variety digital,paperless .
A
paperless world is a long way off, but many businesses are taking
strides to at least create a less-paper world. Companies across various
industries are finding ways to cut paper waste, from issuing electronic
tickets and PDF receipts to incorporating electronic document
management systems.As with so many other green technologies out there,
the driving influence here isn’t necessarily sparing trees nor reducing
one’s carbon impact on the environment (though saving one ream of paper
means five fewer pounds of CO2). Rather, it’s a matter of boosting
efficiency; making an easier-to-maintain paper(less) trail (nice for
compliance purposes); boosting continuity (a digital copy of your files
is handy if a natural disaster hits); and saving cash in the long term
on costs associated with printing and mailing. (For some perspective on
mailing costs, U.S. businesses spent an estimated $800 billion on
direct mail correspondence to potential and existing customers last
year, which translates into over 115 billion pieces of mail.)Also a
boon: less time wasted tracking down evasive faxes and archived paper
documents, as well as transferring the data on those pages to
electronic format.

Yeah, that’s the ticket
One of the growing
trends is so-called paperless tickets. (“So-called” because there’s
still paper involved; just far less.) Last week, the IATA
(International Air Transport Association) — which represents more than
240 airlines comprising 94 percent of international scheduled air
traffic — said that it would stop issuing paper tickets come May 31,
2008. The AITA says that airlines will save $9 per paper ticket that
way, which adds up to $3 billion in annual savings for the industry.
(Whether any of those savings will get passed on to Joe and Jane
Aisle-Seat remains to be seen, but let’s not hold our breath, lest we
cause that little oxygen mask to drop.)The IATA says the move will also
spare “the equivalent of 50,000 mature trees each year.”Now, I’ve read
some comments about this move, the authors of which have expressed
concern that the cost of the paper tickets is essentially being passed
on to the consumer, but I think that’s a misconception or an
exaggeration, depending on how you look at it.If you haven’t flown with
a paperless ticket, here’s how it works: You make your reservation and
receive a confirmation e-mail. Now, you could print up that itinerary,
if you need a printed point of reference, but it’s not necessary. You
could just access that info from your portable device, or jot down the
basic on a piece of scrap paper. Then you show up at the airport before
your flight and show your ID and a credit card to the nice person
behind the counter (or better yet, you swipe it in one of those
check-in kiosks). In turn, you’ll receive one slip of paper, your
boarding pass, which includes all the pertinent info. That’s it.So from
a customer standpoint, it’s really a lot easier than having to worry
about whether your tickets have arrived, or whether you’ve left them at
home on the bed beside the clean underwear you’d meant to pack. Plus
with an e-mail confirmation, you can easily get at your details through
your wireless device, just in case you’ve forgotten whether you’re
taking off at 1:27 a.m. Pacific or Eastern Time.On a related note, The
Boston Globe had an article last month about a company called Flash
Seats, which is pushing electronic tickets to concerts, sporting
events, and the like.It works similarly to the e-tickets for airlines:
When you order your tickets online, the order is associated with your
credit card or identification. And when it’s time to go to the game or
show, you don’t scour the house for the tickets or stand in line at
will call; you swipe your credit card or driver’s license as you go in.
In turn, you get a paper guide telling you where your seats are.In case
your card isn’t read, “venue officials verify the person’s identity by
asking agreed-upon security questions, such as mother’s maiden name or
first pet’s name.”The Cleveland Cavaliers gave the system a spin last
season. Participation was voluntary. “About 17 percent of season ticket
holders used the system last season, a portion that [increased] to 50
percent during the club’s playoff run into the NBA Finals,” according
to the Boston Globe article.In addition to reducing paper waste, the
system means potentially better control and security. “Team officials
say they would like to maintain greater control to improve security, to
prevent counterfeiting, and to reclaim some of the money that is going
to third-party resellers such as eBay, StubHub, RazorGator, and
AceTicket,” says the Globe article.From an end-user perspective,
though, you do lose some convenience. Rather than being able to give
tickets to friends so they can meet you at a show later, you have to go
through the steps of having the electronic tickets transferred to their
names, or else be sure that everyone arrives on time to go in together.

Would you like an e-ceipt with that?
I
wrote about e-receipts a while back after learning that at Apple
Stores, you can opt to have a receipt sent to you via e-mail instead of
issued in paper form on the spot. To me, it seems like a natural
evolution in receipts. That’s how my proofs of purchase show up when I
order online, or when I pay bills online, so why not when I make an
in-store purchase? (I might be a bit warier for purchases made with
cash, but as long as there’s an electronic record stored with my bank
or credit card company, I feel fine.)But the paperless push doesn’t
just end for end-user purchases. Environmental Leader reports that UPS
is trying to convince SMBs to adopt electronic billing by tugging at
their eco-conscious heartstrings: “UPS has partnered with the National
Arbor Day Foundation to make a $1 donation to the organization for
every customer who opts for the paperless PDF invoice.”As UPS describes
it, the benefits of a PDF receipt are numerous. It no doubt saves the
company cash on printing and mailing receipts. And for customers, it
means you receive receipts faster and in convenient electronic format.

Make the pile lower
Electronic
tickets and receipts are, to me, really low-hanging fruit in the drive
toward the paperless office. They represent the end part of complex
workflows that are often tied to hard-to-change business practices and
technology (or lack thereof).One of the most obvious ways to cut paper
(and print) waste at the office is to crack down on all the superfluous
printing and copies end-users make. The average employee reportedly
wastes $85 worth of printer paper and ink each year through unnecessary
prints. Products such as GreenPrint offer an easy, non-disruptive tool
for putting a dent in the pile. The utility lets users preview
printouts and easily remove specific pages, text, or graphics from a
print session.But companies are taking further steps to reduce paper
use, in the name of boosting efficiency. Insurance company Lloyd’s (of
London) has most recently garnered attention in publications such as
The Wall Street Journal and Times Online for company CEO Richard Ward’s
paper-cutting efforts. According to the Times, “a colleague in IT told
him that each day Lloyd’s was sending four tons of documents to its
sorting office in Chatham, all carried by those white vans.”Ward told
The Wall Street Journal that he’s tackling the paper deluge on a small
scale, liking it to “eating an elephant with a teaspoon.” “We have to
take small bites out of that elephant to make sure we can digest the
changes we’re making,” he told The WSJ.Among changes Ward has
implemented, as he outlined in a speech in May: “Last year, we
introduced an electronic filing cabinet – a document repository that
enables claims and premiums to be handled quickly and efficiently
without the need for paper files. … Currently a fifth of all in scope
claims are being processed using the Electronic Claims File. This is a
significant increase on the 5 percent at the beginning of the year.””In
addition,” he added, “if you look at Accounting and Settlement, more
than 80,000 premium-related transactions have been processed
electronically. Once again there has been a significant increase from
the beginning of the year.”He says that the company’s processing 30
percent of its claims electronically now, but the the goal is to hit
100 percent by March 31. “We might have a symbolic crushing of a van,
and it might become a piece of art somewhere inside or outside the
building. That might be quite appropriate to do once we’ve reached our
goals,” he told the Journal.(Notably, crushing an otherwise useful van
might not be the ideal way to celebrate an eco-friendly achievement of
reducing paper waste and boosting efficiency, but that is another
story.)

Keep your fax straight
There are plenty of other
recent examples I can point to of organizations strolling the paperless
trail. Rosen Hotels and Resorts recently announced that it adopted a
fax server solution called RightFax from Captaris and integrated its
Microsoft Exchange, Cisco CallManager, and Canon MFPs (multifunction
peripherals). The end result: a central document management solution,
used at the company’s seven hotels, as well as its medical center and
the insurance agency, to easily store and share documents that used to
be passed around in paper format.Among other features, the combined
solution lets employees send faxes from just about any desktop app, or
right from the MFPs, rather than having to deal with paper. Moreover,
faxes are filed into SharePoint, where they can be accessed from within
the network or remotely. Also handy: Employees on the go can receive
immediate notifications when important documents are received.Paper
still plays a vital role in the business world, and no doubt will for
years to come. But as more companies trade in reams of paper, stacks of
pricey ink cartridges, and boxes of mailing supplies for PDFs, digital
ink, e-mail, and document management systems, we’ll collectively reap
the benefits of a less-paper world. 

[Author]

October 3, 2007 at 12:03 PM