All over the country organisations are turning to technological weapons in the battle with this enemy of efficiency. The campaign to scale the paper mountain must be a decisive one with a well thought through battle strategy, so here’s our five-tactic battle plan, complete with despatches from the front line, for when it’s your time to join the war on paper.

Tactic #1 Equip your mobile army

Mobile forces are particularly important to your campaign as they take on board handheld devices and applications designed for in-the-field use as part of the assault on the hard copy chaos. Laptops, handheld computers and dedicated mobile terminals are doubling as data entry devices in warehouses, factories and in the field, as wireless networking becomes mainstream. Microsoft’s new Tablet operating system for example has given rise to the Tablet PC which doubles as a lightweight laptop or handheld touch-screen device accepting pen-based input and recognising handwriting. This an ideal device for running forms-based applications where ticks, crosses, signatures, handwritten notes or even voice commands activate back-end processes over the wireless network.

Dispatches from the front line
Clayton Wakefield, ASB Bank’s general manager technology, operations and property, believes the Tablet PC has the potential to increase productivity, efficiency and accuracy across all banking divisions. “We believe the new technology will enable us to get the best out of our mobile services,” he says, “and enhance the relationships we have with our customers.” The new Electronic Transactions Act will mean the bank’s mobile managers using the Tablet PC will be able to accept client signatures to contracts on the road. Other companies will see the opportunities to close deals on the spot – especially where the Tablet PC connects via Telecom or Vodafone to the corporate network to check inventory and availability details.

At pet food and pet accessory supplier Masterpet, office PCs and bulky notebook-based touch-screens weren’t making the grade, so the company began to look for lighter, faster, more capable solutions for its mobile salespeople. Rather than requesting information or placing orders by phone or fax, Masterpet wanted its national sales staff to operate electronically as they travelled to pet stores, veterinary outlets and supermarkets around the country. It opted for a combination of Telecom Mobile’s Jetstream mobile data network, HP’s Compaq iPAQ pocket PC and field sales software from emPrise IT. The company claims to have halved its IT costs and improved customer service as a result. Using their mobile sales solution, reps can now generate sales orders which are immediately synchronised with the head office database. An invoice is automatically generated, completely removing paper from the process.

Tactic #2 Immediate capture upon entry

Another approach that can make a direct hit on incoming paper is to capture it immediately as it enters the organisation using scanners and then centrally archive and workflow it to those that need it. These solutions have come of age and are now working well together.

Dispatches from the front line
Fuji Xerox demonstrated a good example of what the future might hold for medium to large organisations at the America’s Cup Louis Vuitton Media Center. At the front end of the document management system were Fuji Xerox DCC 320 and 400 machines operating as colour copiers, scanners and fax machines. The company's ‘Docushare’ application was used to store and track documents through the archival and retrieval process either from a PC or the system hardware. The system scanned to Microsoft Word, pdf, email, HTML web pages or a document repository on the fly. Incoming faxes were converted to digital for storage or turned into email.

The million-dollar hardware, software and extranet investment enabled up to 3000 accredited journalists around the world to access up-to-the minute results, background documents, press releases, still photographs, audio and video clips and 130 years of archived information about the event – an impossible feat a few years ago when paper was the dominant form factor. An essential part of the system was ‘Flowport’ software, billed as “paper that knows where it’s going” – whereby a master form allowed users to select requirements in tick boxes and assign directions for a complete set of actions including importing the electronic version into DocuShare or archiving.

A government-backed assault on paper is also imminent with the directive for its departments to have public information online by 2004. It’s a major incentive for companies and public institutions to begin seriously considering electronic document management options.

The Manukau City Council is doing its bit to reduce paper flow and increase efficiency having invested heavily in various leading-edge systems over the past couple of years including a document archiving system from Alchemy. The most recent product is Verity’s LiquidOffice, which it's planning to use to ease the resource consent process. “What normally happens is a piece of paper is initiated for a resource consent which then goes to about 15 different departments that each have their say, adding attachments along the way,” says Nik Key, from LiquidOffice distributor Team Progress.

With Verity’s LiquidOffice a compound electronic document is created and monitored through its lifecycle determining where any bottlenecks are and enabling an administrator to directly email the person who’s holding up the process to see what’s happening. “It's not about people pushing paper any more it’s about managing documents from your desktop,” says Key.

Auckland City Environments looked to Datamail to assist them to manage not only new documents but also legacy record management processes. The three year project will see nearly 15 million documents related to property, currently stored on a wide range of media – paper, microfiche, large format plans and aperture cards – converted to digital images capable of being sourced easily, quickly and by several people simultaneously.

Record management up until this point was slowing down information handling and access to records, making for an inefficient consent process, but also increasing Auckland City Environments’ liability and risk of litigation owing to inaccurate and unavailable information. Records were also not in duplicable formats meaning if anyone had a file out for whatever reason no one could access this information until it was returned. Datamail are 18 months into the 3 year programme. 20% of all the records have been converted – that’s around three million files – and 30% of the queries received are handled using electronic media. It all adds up to significant savings of public money.

Tactic #3 If you must use paper, use TELEforms

TELEforms enable companies and government agencies to capture information on structured, pre-formatted forms and to quickly extract, capture, verify, process and index large quantities of information using production-level scanners, fax servers and the internet. It results in automatically sending clean data, documents and attachments to multiple archive and retrieval systems electronically.

Dispatches from the front line
Adfit looks after the memberships of many gyms in New Zealand. It’s now expanding into Australia thanks to the efficiency of TELEforms. The company was attracted to TELEforms (supplied in New Zealand by Team Progress – www.progress.co.nz) because of their high accuracy in correctly identifying characters, says Adfit IT manager Paul Faint. In fact that accuracy has proven to be as high as 95% in the most recent version.

As soon as new applications are complete, fitness centres in Australia fax both the direct debit and the membership forms to Adfit in Auckland. TELEform then takes the fax copies and converts them into the database using a scanner. No re-keying is required.

Tactic #4 Allow others to interact electronically

Many organisations are developing web front ends for trading partners and customers to interact directly with back-end systems as a means of eliminating extra processing and paper.

Dispatches from the front line
e://volution’s hosted Payworks system is one that financial controllers should consider. It allows companies the ability to have suppliers submit or upload invoices online, where they can be routed to the correct purchasing authority and then aggregated for the CFO to check and transfer to accounts payable for processing.

Paykel, New Zealand’s largest supplier of engineering supplies, is another now replacing paper documents with web forms. When a buyer raises a purchase order on the Paykel e-commerce system developed and hosted by Olympic Software using Microsoft technologies, the supplier is sent an email with a web link. Clicking the link will launch a web form, which feeds the supplier’s confirmation or dispatch notification directly back into the Paykel legacy system.

It’s good to see the IRD waging a successful battle here too. In its first two months of operation, the department received over 3000 GST returns electronically via the www.ird.govt.nz site.

Tactic #5 Get documents in electronic format from your trading partners

This strategy can either mean direct system-to-system coupling or via a third-party broking service that takes a document from your trading partner’s system in any format, converts it and send it straight into your back office system in the format you need it – and vice versa of course. With the right solution faxes can be converted into emails, emails into database formats, proprietary forms into XML or any other easily readable data interchange standard. It’s estimated that the use of inhouse or third-party message broking services can reduce order-processing costs by up to 90%. While the speed of order handling creates major efficiencies errors and exceptions are also eliminated – not to mention masses of paper.

Dispatches from the front line
SellAgence had the use of a third-party service forced upon it by client requirements. The agents for Gillette, Braun, Wilkinson, Oral B and Duracell brands in New Zealand settled on a third-party message exchange to reduce pressure in its dealings with retail chains, including Foodstuffs and Farmers. It deployed ‘Decode’, the document exchange bureau offered by e-commerce specialist Conduit. With its new Oracle ERP system, SellAgence has now added shipping notices and invoicing to the forms being translated, and is encouraging other customers into e-commerce relationships. SellAgence simply points its customers to Conduit’s translation site or Conduit points its systems to them and the paperwork’s all but gone.

AUT does similarly with its purchases via the SupplyNet e-Marketplace. The system matches AUT’s purchase order automatically with their supplier’s invoice – and both parties get a monthly ‘Matching Invoices’ and ‘Exception Report’ statement, making settlement and processing significantly smoother without the paper clogging the system.

New Zealand Post-owned Electronic Commerce Network (ECN) is a strong ally when deploying tactics #4 and #5 – the company exchanges over 30,000 e-documents every day and has the tools to facilitate most B2B transactions for their clients.

Conclusion

Most organisations that have adopted any of these five tactics report they’re making a significant dent in the paper mountain. The battle has begun ... but the war is far from over.

March 2003

By Tony McDrury