I feel a little awkward as I sit here to write this. Even as I glance up at the title of this post.  Not because I don’t challenge the notion, but because everywhere I go, I keep seeing and hearing just the opposite from other bloggers, authors, etc.  I keep hearing how we are in the age of “The Paperless Society”.  Those who have gone paperless, those who are going paperless, etc.  But what about those who haven’t?  Or aren’t… or simply don’t know where to start?

From my vantage point, we have a long way to go, if we are to become “The Paperless Society”.  Of course, there are those professional practices, accountants and insurance agencies amongst others, who have reduced their volume of paper significantly.  However, in talking with my clients here in State College and the Central PA area, attorneys, health care, engineering, government agencies, just to name a few, they are far from a paperless model.

Yes, I am well aware that Obama is pushing hard for electronic medical records, but have you been to the hospital lately?  Do you see the amount of administrative paper being produced from a single visit?  It’s staggering.

The reality as I see it is simple.

Those in business are focused on growing their business, or practice.  Shaping their organizations to serve their clients in the best possible way.   That best way might be to increase profitability in order to create organizational sustainability to meet the growing demands of customer needs.

At times, the so called “Paperless Society” clashes with this philosophy head on.  You will hear all day long how electronic images save an organization the ongoing storage costs of physical storage, reduced retrieval time and instant delivery of urgent requests.  This is true, but here are some facts that suggest that we may be farther from it, if ever we do  achieve the paperless society.

There is no doubt that the cost of technology is coming down.  Today, you can go to you nearest “big box” store and pickup a high speed scanner for a few hundred dollars.  However, as fast as the cost of technology drops, labor costs continue to rise.

Think about it for a minute.  It’s true, while all of those boxes in your back room can be converted  and placed on a disc, at what price?

My experience tells me that it takes 2 to 6 hours of labor, to prepare a single box for scanning.  Not to mention that you need to name or index those documents after scanning as well.

Something else to consider is this… What is the retention period for your different classifications of records and how active are those records respectively?

This is the question I like to ask those challenging this notion.  Why?  Because if you have a population of records, which you are required to keep for 7 years or less and the frequency of retrieval is low, I challenge you to beat the cost of retaining those records in hard copy.

By retaining paper records  in a lower cost offsite facility, you could store a single box for 7 years, for just $21.00.  The cost to scan that same box would be @ $200.00, on the low end.  Take those numbers and multiply them by 100′s if not 1,000′s of boxes.

In today’s reality 90% of documents are still retained in paper form.   Research also tells us that 80% of paper documents will never be retrieved again.

While these documents are typically being stored in filing cabinets and related systems within expensive office space, I challenge you to take a look at alternative means of managing your information.  I think it all comes back to the 80-20 rule.

It is critical to your success to readily convert the 20% of your highly active and sensitive information.  However, I suggest pause and evaluation, when determining what to do with the 80%.

Are you making decisions simply to be part of the “In Crowd” or are you making decisions based on your bottom line?  It is not about going paperless, but rather, finding the right hybrid approach to an effective document management solution.