Reducing Paper in Document Workflows

I’ve been spending some time lately putting together before and after workflow diagrams of some of our customer implementations and had an interesting realization. It seems that too often we get laser focused on how many steps are reduced in a “before and after” solution. And we believe that a reduction in steps from 9 to 7 is not as good as a reduction from 9 to 6.

What I am realizing is that this may not always be the case with document imaging. With document imaging, the workflow improvements come from the reduction of paper, and the resulting manual processes. Yes, there may be a reduction in steps as well. But, in some cases, there may actually be steps added as more electronic systems are touched.  However, there is always a reduction in the time spent on steps, since working with electronic information is vastly quicker than working with paper.

Not surprisingly, the workflows that showed the biggest improvements in time spent (and therefore $$) were the ones that moved the scanning process closest to the beginning of the workflow. With document imaging, it’s not a complicated message -- the earlier that paper is eliminated, the more efficient the remainder of the workflow is.

Comments

[Greg Walters]

Good point.

Many times after implementing a program, there are actually more steps, but the time spent is reduced along with costs - good read.

[Ken Stewart]

Very interesting. I would say we do, all too often, focus on reducing number of steps and not focusing on time itself. I will have to ensure I remember this facet of workflow study as there are undoubtedly times when focusing on time spent will not always be where the greatest number of steps might be reduced.

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