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Green ECM: Not Paperless, but Less Paper
While the paperless office remains an elusive goal, at least for some time, there are beginning to be signs that the use of paper in the office is beginning to decrease.
In May 2010, a report summarizing the results of a survey taken by IDC found that:
- 60 percent of organizations with more than 5000 or more people have plans to reduce the amount of paper in their offices
- 59 percent of workers in organizations with 5000 or more people say that they are working with fewer paper documents than in the past
Now a new report from AIIM also seems to be support the observation that offices are beginning to use less paper than previously. The AIIM report that in 39 percent of offices that the use of paper is beginning to decline. Although the trend isn’t universal. 27 percent of organizations are still seeing increasing more paper being used.
The AIIM report, which was sponsored by image-capture vendors like Kofax, found that the offices where the greatest declines were being seen are those that have deployed scan-capture solutions. As many as 53 percent of organizations with scan imaging solutions found that their office-wide paper consumption is dropping. And as many as 60 percent of organizations that have implemented scan-capture solutions found that those solutions more than paid for their investments within 12 months.
Doug Miles, AIIM’s Director of Market Intelligence said that “we have been surveying these topics for many years, and this is the first time that we have seen a net reduction in paper usage. Nobody is expecting the paperless office any time soon, but we are beginning to see the less-paper office.”
