Is all this talk about document imaging saving money true? Seemed like a lot of hype to me, so I did some research. This is what I found out.
The Cost of the Paper Chase
- The United States has more than 4 trillion paper documents, and that number is growing at a rate of 22 percent per year.
- Ninety-five percent of corporate data is on paper.
- Paper has been proven to reduce office productivity. On average, eight hours per week are wasted in managing paper – 1 hour finding documents; 1 hour sharing documents; 1 hour distributing paper documents; 1 hour archiving and retrieving paper files.
- The average office worker is responsible for 20,000 pieces of paper annually.
- The average worker generates 45 sheets of paper each day.
- Employees waste about 75 percent of their time dealing with paper-based information.
- It costs the average company $20 in labor to file a document; $120 to find a misfiled document; and $220 to replace a lost document.
- The average office worker spends 400 hours per year searching for lost documents.
- More than 50 percent of paper documents generated are never actually used
- Eighty percent of the data within an enterprise is unstructured and that data is growing at a rate of 300 percent annually. ( Paper Chase facts taken from http://www.ingrammicroadvisor.com/document-imaging/24-facts-about-saving-money-with-document-imaging-solutions)
WOW! That’s a lot of paper!! So how does that effect my business? The obvious reason is that all that paper has to be stored and that costs money. Take for instance the fact that
There are 15,000 sheets of paper in the average file cabinet drawer, 20,000 sheets in a lateral file drawer, and 3,500 sheets of paper in the average Banker’s box. The average file cabinet requires 7 square feet of space. There are 71.3 file cabinets in a typical organization. The average cost of office space is $23.23 per square foot. 7X71.3×23.23+= $11,594+!
Now that’s a lot of rent for file cabinets and paper!
In addition, add in the typical 50% reduction in maintenance costs and time that the average business process management budget sees and the 30% productivity improvement due to simplified workflow. Document imaging is much more than just a bunch of hype or stored up words. Document imaging saves money.
