According to content management association AIIM, office staff are loath to give up paper copies, despite the wide availability of scanners and document management systems.
AIIM's recent survey found that 62 percent of important paper documents are still archived as paper. Even when documents are sent off for archive scanning, 25 percent are photocopied beforehand "just in case". Less than a third of the paper originals are systematically destroyed after scanning.
AIIM's President, John Mancini commented, "We are at last in a situation where electronic archiving of records is efficient, effective and can save huge amounts of space, and yet most office staff seem to be hanging on to paper in the mistaken view that there is some legal reason to do so.
"Despite the fact that the legal admissibility of scanned paper documents has been established for nearly 20 years and is nailed down in legislation and standards around the world, there is still this suspicion among users that they may need to produce the original paper copy at some stage," continued Mancini. "The fact that searching for - and finding - a paper copy is umpteen times more difficult than finding an electronic one seems to have escaped them."
In the survey, 70% of the respondents agreed with the statement, 'Users feel that paper records are needed for legal reasons'. Even at the organisational level, in 25 percent of businesses the legal admissibility of scanned documents is still seen as an issue. "In many organisations," says Mancini, "there is a potential win-win situation, but only half of the benefit is being leveraged. Improved searchability of business documents is the biggest user driver for investments in scanning and capture, and yet a more visible benefit - reduced storage costs for records - is unrealised because of this obsession with holding on to the paper."