Blogs

I’d like to  welcome ABBYY VP of Marketing, Carmela Wong, to the AIIM Community Blog to discuss our thoughts on the parperless workspace. 

In the recent AIIM industry research report, "The Paper Free Office - Dream or Reality,” ABBYY, along with EMC, IBM, Kofax, and Swiss Post Solutions assisted in a study to find if businesses were moving towards a paperless work environment. After a few months of research, we were pleased to see a slight decrease in the consumption of paper and photocopying, specifically in larger organizations. Unfortunately, paper consumption and photocopying is not headed out the door anytime soon, as it is increasing by 32 percent in other organizations. Although businesses have not fully implemented a digital work space, research showed that investing in an all-electronic communication system can enhance work space, increase productivity, and most importantly benefit the environment.

Through this study, participants were left with an understanding of the benefits and success of implementing scanning and data capture services. Some of our highlighted key findings showed:

• Improved sharability and searchability are the biggest drivers for investment in scanning and capture. This finding came as no surprise, as in an organization where documentation is constantly archived, searching for a document through a filing cabinet can be time consuming. Using data capture software improves the processing of high volumes of documentation, and also allows customizable sort and easy data entry for quick sharing and fast searching capabilities.  This saves businesses the time and money that would otherwise be used to store and manually file documentation.

• On average, respondents using scanning and capture consider that it improves the speed of response to customers, suppliers, citizens or staff by six-times or more. With the impressive capabilities of data and document capture, we foresee more and more organizations investing in these services for higher return on investment. When technology ultimately affects a company’s bottom line and can benefit customers, there is benefit to implementing a solution

• 38 percent of respondents have employees equipped to use portable devices to capture documents or forms when not at their desks. Among the many benefits of using portable devices for data capture the most important feature to acknowledge is its ability to send data rapidly from one device to another. We are constantly talking about how the capabilities of capture will continue to grow, especially within mobile applications and devices, and were truly happy to see this type of growth in the marketplace.

• 12 percent of respondents are committed to a strategy of cloud deployment of capture – rising to 20 percent in the largest organizations.  Moving to the cloud is a growing trend in the market especially because it’s cost efficient, resourceful and easy to manage. With its capabilities and the capabilities of mobile and data capture, combined these services will produce effective results.  We will touch back on this soon, as it is a constantly evolving trend.

Going completely paperless in the workplace may continue to be a challenge in the future, but if more organizations take the risk and invest in an all-electronic communication model the results may be worth the transition. Is your organization working to become paperless? What are some of the benefits you see in that?

--Carmela Wong