Paperchains

Apparently the ‘paperless office’ is just not coming to pass. An analyst blames it on people not ’selling’ document management systems effectively:

In his report Document Management Solutions: What End Users Want, IDC analyst Rishi Ghai found that 60 per cent of [Australian] survey respondents said the number of pages printed or copied in their organisation had increased over the last five years. …

He says the key conclusion is that vendors are failing to convince users of the cost savings, and governance and environmental benefits document management products can deliver to organisations.

[Via : Paperless offices remains elusive dream: IDC - IT Brief - IT Brief.]

There’s some truly dreadful writing in quoted material in the rest of the article, like this:

IDC research suggests that end users’ discontentment with document management solution implementations can escalate very quickly in the absence of visible improvements in the short term. Vendors must work closely with clients to develop realistic service-level agreements and periodically measure and communicate systems performance indicators to avoid dissatisfaction build up.

After reading and re-reading that I think it says something along these lines:

Users quickly become fed up with document management systems if things don’t seem to get better quickly. People who sell the systems should be realistic about what they can do, and show users how they are making a difference.

If document management systems can in fact reduce the amount of paper being wasted, then vendors should get their act together and find ways to encourage users to use them properly. And in plain language!

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