A World Made Of Paper
Seems Like That Sometimes, Doesn’t It?

I’ll stop teasing. Organizations are, of course, currently doing all three. The key takeaway is that efficiencies come in small increments sometimes. An expense report with my name, title and department already pre-printed saves a few seconds, and (frankly) more in terms of hassle-reduction. You can’t put a price tag on that.

"These things are relatively easy," John pointed out. "The real challenge is changing the document-related things that fundamentally change the way businesses run. That has to be done more thoughtfully, and therefore more cautiously," he said.

"That doesn’t mean people aren’t doing it!" he added quickly. "But it is more common among the older guard users. Some of the newer customers aren’t quite willing to embrace the ‘business-changing’ aspects until they have first realized some of the benefits from automating their back-office operations."

I wanted to know how, in a globally dispersed, functionally siloed (in other words, typical) organization, a vendor such as Xerox can get the message across from one department to the next. After all, it’s not like they sit in a cubby next to one another. What is the method for propagating a solution from one part of an organization to another?

"It’s all about trust," he said. "People do it all the time. We agree to buy this one thing from you. It turns out that it works, and the success is measurable. So when you come to me with a new thing, I’ll be more comfortable to try it as the next step in the process. When that happens over and over, trust builds," John said.

"As a vendor like me, the trick is to take the core of document management, image capture and the ability to manipulate data, and put them all together into a deliberate business process structure that is repeatable.

"First," he went on, "you establish an application that solves a problem. That brings the opportunity to create a platform in an organization. Then you add more solutions on top of that platform. It’s not unlike what’s been done on the desktop, or what’s been done with iPhones ... the killer app with an iPhone is the ability to make a phone call. But it’s also brought along the ability to do many, many more things."

That’s all well and good, but I wondered aloud whether the imagination exists in most organizations to translate a successful deployment in one department into a similarly successful deployment over the wall in a vastly different segment of the business.

"You’re right; it’s very hard to do in a large organization. But in the mid-tier companies, the internal reference is very important in expanding the footprint of a platform. We don’t expect it to be organic. It has to be facilitated by our (the vendor’s) sales team," said John. "That’s why a vendor like us needs a network of partners with domain expertise, who can create value-added solutions.

"This is where a lot of vendor companies fail," said John. "Sometimes vendors try to change from making screws to making cars. You can’t do that. Deploying solutions across the enterprise requires a series of partners with domain expertise that can bring all the pieces together, who know the right language to speak to the customer and who have years of experience to know the pitfalls around things."

Going Green
Before I let John go, I had to ask a question that was bothering me. One of the (few) fashionable aspects of document capture is that it is often described as a "green" initiative. Fewer trees die, and all that. So a lot of the scanning/document capture companies are touting their contribution to the planet’s well-being.

That’s cool. I’m in favor of that. But I had to ask whether in these times of economic stress and uncertainty, is "going green" really a priority for organizations they talk to? Isn’t worrying about environmental issues sort of a luxury, when there are bigger, more immediate economic fish to fry?

"Green means less cost," he answered.

Well, yes and no, I suppose. There can be costs associated with "being green," and typically the driving force behind environmental activism is more altruistic than business-oriented. "True, there is an altruistic aspect," admitted John. "And there’s a certain trendiness, too. But the reason we tell people to go green is to save money. You use less paper. You use less energy. And it increases their visibility and acceptability in their markets. We can contribute to the messaging they deliver to their customers.

"To the degree we can provide them with talking points and demonstration points surrounding why using an imaging system will help them become more green, it helps them facilitate the conversations they have with their customers."

I’ve been around the document and content sciences long enough to know when to listen, and when to shut up. I will now shut up. But you shouldn’t. Take the time to read the following articles, to think about how YOUR business deals with its "paper beast," and learn a little bit more.