The Less Paper Businesses Use, The More Problematic It Becomes

Analysts now see document capture as an important, growing market, however, many organizations and business leaders don’t see how it can be directly applied to deliver a range of practical benefits to the enterprise. This paper considers what motivates organizations to use capture technology, examines specific use cases and highlights some key case studies of successful document capture implementations.

The Paper Paradox

Document capture technology has been around for over 30 years, yet analysts today are classifying it as an emerging technology. Given organizations’ broad and ongoing efforts to reduce the use of physical documentation along with expenses related to its storage and handling, how can a decades-old technology be called an emerging technology and experience a resurgence in both popularity and necessity? The fact is, despite organizations’ best efforts, paper is still alive and in many cases—such as with legal requirements in the banking and insurance industries—necessary. The US, for example, spends $25-35 billion per year filing, storing and retrieving paper 1 while the average EU office worker in 2013 used between 16 and 45 sheets of paper per day. 2 This means that while paper reduction policies continue, more existing documents must be made digitally accessible, shareable, and searchable, leading to what we might call “the paper paradox”: the fact that paper-based barriers within organizations are increasing even though paper volumes are generally decreasing.

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