Smarter document management in the

Smarter documentmanagement in

the office

As businesses and organizations look for newways to manage information, they’re lookingto key partners to help simplify and streamlinetheir document processes. Smarter DocumentManagementSM is the ability to add intelligenceand structure to documents digital and paper—to activate the content they contain tostreamline business processes and integratewith your structured data systems.

Managing documents more effectively,controlling costs associated with documentsand document processes, and usingresources more efficiently is increasinglyimportant to businesses and ITorganizations. This paper outlines thebenefits and basic framework forimplementing Smarter DocumentManagement in office environments.

Introduction

Every organization – small startups, growingmid-size and global corporations — has madean investment in Information Technology.From 1997 to 2003, U.S. companies spent $2.5trillion on IT, according to the research firmIDC. The research house goes further to statethat by 2007, offices around the world willproduce 4.5 trillion pages of hardcopyinformation.

The emphasis for businesses as they try toreduce costs and improve productivity is not to eliminate paper, but to streamline how theinformation embedded in the paper documentsis handled. Many organizations are lookingbeyond adding technology in order to improvethe bottom line; they are looking to the people and processes actively shaping theirworkplace. They are interested in growingsmarter, not bigger.

With the shift in focus, new questions areraised; how can they tailor and manage thetechnology to best meet their needs, and howcan they later alter their processes to best usethe technology? When it comes to investing inIT, there is a marked shift from the “T” to the“I” — from the technology to the information.It’s information that generates new ideas anddrives decisions.

The Big “I” and Document ChallengeDocuments are one of the most criticalelements of working life, the key connectorsbetween IT infrastructure, people, and criticalbusiness processes. A recent report from IDC characterizes the growing importance of documents as “driven by regulatorycompliance, the need to communicate withcustomers, suppliers and employees acrossmultiple media, and the role of documents ineffective business process solutions and related investments.”1 The costs that lie in the production, distribution and use ofdocuments are a hidden, overlooked andgenerally misunderstood aspect of businesscost and productivity.

In all cases, the documents carry content that constitutes the backbone of workprocesses. However, that content is still mostlyunstructured and hidden within the verbalexpressions of text. It is up to individual usersto figure out where to take it, what to do withit, how to process it and take an action on it.

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According to IDC, offices around the world will produce 4.5 trillion pages of hardcopy information by 2007.

Introduction toSmarter Document Management

1 “The Role of Documents in Effective Business Processes,” Angele Boyd, IDC, October 2004.

Toward Smarter Documents

Smarter documents are documents containingstructured information to assist with documentretrieval, distribution and manipulation. Thesesmarter documents allow for more competitivebusinesses, combining intelligent humanprocessing with the number crunching andcommunication facilities of computers andnetworks. Fluid document sharing acrossdifferent media can close the processing gapbetween paper and digital documents, whileconnecting the information contained withother critical information systems.

The foundation for smarter documents andtheir management requires R&D investmentand insights from two complementary aspects:work practices and technology. Throughinterviews and workshops, written diaries andvideo records, researchers at Xerox havedeveloped a deeper understanding of howpeople work. This provides the basis fordeveloping technologies and solutions tailoredfor customer needs and that truly improveefficiency.

Many studies have been conducted over thepast three decades to analyze how informationflows and how documents and their technologyinfrastructures are part of the IT environment.This understanding has generated technologyto activate the information embedded inunstructured documents, and make itaccessible as part of efficient businessapplications and more productive operations.Some of these studies have focused on:

• Understanding in which settings officeworkers prefer to use paper documents overelectronic, and how they interact

• Understanding real business productivityopportunities resulting from reducingredundancies and errors associated withdocument intensive work

• Identifying ways mobile users can interactwith stationary office devices, such asmultifunction devices, copiers and printers,to deliver increasingly sophisticateddocument services

• Analyzing how to best use, and proactivelyadminister and maintain print/copyinfrastructures to reduce user interventions,and eliminate down time

These studies provide the foundation forSmarter Document Management in the office environment. The framework addressesthree key areas:

Device and Fleet Infrastructure Management

Deployment of people, methodologies, tools, and technology to better support printing and imaging applications

Document Lifecycle Management

Streamlining business processes surroundingthe office and document-intensive workflows

Managed Document Services and Platforms

Assessing and managing the role of documentsas containers handling an enterprise’s mission-critical information, and improving overallbusiness process efficiency by leveragingcustomized services and solutions

Smarter Document Management for the officeenvironment assesses the opportunities in these three areas, to help organizations moveto more cost-effective document information and process management. In the next section, the Smarter Document Managementframework is detailed within each focus area:Device and Fleet Management, DocumentLifecycle Management, and Managed Servicesand Platforms.

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IT

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Xerox Palo Alto ResearchCenter (PARC)

In the 70’s, behavioralresearch here led to the big green button still inplace on today’s officemachines. Similar studiesare now examining howdocument managementand technology canbecome more intelligent.

1. Device and FleetInfrastructure ManagementThere are five main components to people,process and technology deployment in aSmarter Document Management strategy:

1 Assessing the growing complexity and costof managing diverse networked devices andapplications for printing and imaging

2 Using fact-based assessment tools tounderstand total costs

3 The smarter deployment of devices andmanagement tools

4 Adequately securing information indocuments that are printed or scanned

5 Assessing opportunities for managedservices in printing and imaging for betterreturn on investment

IT Operations Managers, including system andnetwork administrators, are concerned with thegrowing complexity, shrinking resources, andmanaging costs associated with new demandson networked systems and for new applications.IT departments look to standardize, simplifyand consolidate assets, and want to provideadequate flexibility, while still positioning theirorganizations for growth. It’s about efficiency,effectiveness and innovation. There isincreasing awareness that significant costcontrols can be achieved by rightsizing thedocument printing and imaging infrastructure.However, ownership and management of theprinting and imaging fleet is fractured acrosslines of business, workgroups, andgeographies. The result is a mix of products,software, and protocols, frequentlyunderutilized devices, and strained ITresources and challenging cost controlopportunities arising from managing a multiplevendor environment.

Unfortunately, IT managers may findthemselves battling a reality that includes mix-and-match hardware and software, oftenwith older non-networked copiers and printers.Purchasing decisions made for copiers,networked printers and personal desktopprinters may have been made with inadequate,or worse, ad hoc deployment strategies withoutunderstanding the organization’s overallbusiness needs, and the long term impact ofthese devices on maintenance and suppliescosts. Further, few organizations havedocument tracking systems that accuratelymeasure true usage for print, scan, fax andcopy services.

A methodical and proven approach tounderstanding Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)considers all costs associated with procuring,owning and using document printing andimaging technology, maintenance and ongoingsupport. Total Cost includes upfront andongoing costs for prints, supplies, maintenance,and help desk support resources. Accuratemeasurement tools and usage data can helpestablish accurate current costs, and apply bestpractices and standards to better control costs— while maintaining or ideally expandingcapacity and improving services. Assessmentsmust be fact based, practical to implement, and scalable to support evaluations in smallbusinesses, departments, or across an enterprisewith the necessary rigor to provide reliableguidance for rightsizing.

Total Cost of Ownership encompasses direct costs such as upfront device acquisition &financing costs and ongoing charges for print cartridges, supplies, paper, maintenance, as well as related indirect costs, such as space, power, IT support, help desk support, andend-user productivity impacts. Direct costs are often $50-80 per employee, with indirectcosts often 2-4 times the direct cost.

Device and FleetInfrastructure Management

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IT

Office productivity assessments and documenttracking systems provide IT managers withaccurate data to better leverage and managecurrent investments, exploit new valuecapabilities with smarter deploymentapproaches, and improve bottom line costs.Enhanced capabilities achieved through more cost effective color printing and theintroduction of scanning to support documentmanagement can lead to significantly higherlevels of productivity, and allows IT the abilityto provide greater value to the organization andreturn on investment. With the advent of MFPs(multifunctional products) and the opportunityfor fleet rightsizing, the extended capabilitiesserve as the gateway to paper reduction,compressed business cycle times, increasedworker productivity, and more secure paper toelectronic document management strategies.

Systems that are easy to configure, manageand use are essential to any network and ITdepartment. The best engineered printers andMFPs offer solid two-way communicationbetween technology and users, robust security,detailed auditing and concurrency in copy,scan, fax and print operations. IT departmentsrecognizing the opportunity to includeproductive, multitasking MFPs in their fleetmanagement strategies are discovering thevalue add capabilities can also lead tostreamlined work processes and more efficientbusiness operations. This potential for smartMFPs is yet to be tapped in many organizations.

Information security has emerged as one of the highest priorities for businesses and their supporting network informationinfrastructures, across organizations of all sizes and in all business sectors. Secure officeenvironments, and document printing andimaging systems must deliver end-to-endsecurity from scanned input to printed outputand the associated electronic print files.Specific measures are needed to guarantee the security of printed documents andelectronic documents.

Today, IT expects security features to beembedded in printing and imaging platformsand services, including:

• A means for securing printing• Image erasure after print• Customer-defined authorization• Comprehensive audit logs• Data encryption during transmission and in

storage• Secure scan-to-destination applications

Whether managing one device or many, bothend-users and network administrators wantintelligently designed tools to help maintainproductivity and reduce calls to the help desk.Printing and imaging device managementutilities should help IT detect, view, and managedevices and job queues regardless of devicemanufacturer. Intelligent remote monitoringsoftware can reduce or eliminate avoidabledowntime from undetected consumablesdepletion; job stoppages due to resourceconflicts; or hardware failures. This softwarecan also prevent calls to the help desk.

A fully managed printing and imaging solutionmay be the optimal approach to cutting costs.Adoption of outsourced fleet managementservices focuses a calculating eye on thecurrent document output asset backbone– the people, equipment, services, and suppliesrequired. For some enterprises, better return oninvestment is achieved through customizableand comprehensive tracking, accounting toolsand reporting systems, and the allocation ofdedicated people who ensure optimal fleetmanagement, providing document workflowsupport services.

Smarter Document Management for devicesand fleets addresses the growing complexityand costs of managing these systems, providesnew value add capability and efficiencies,improves document security, and better returnon infrastructure investments.

According to CAPV research, nearly 50% of organizations do notcurrently have a documenttracking solution of any kind(manual or electronic).

– InfoTrends Research, “Organizationsare Ready to Tackle Document OutputCosts in the Office,” CAPV, December 2004.

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2. Document LifecycleManagementWith the introduction of digital technologies,the use of paper in the office started changing.As pointed out more than a decade ago by a Xerox research study,2 “we are not headedtowards offices that use less paper, but rather towards offices that keep less paper.”Electronic documents are used for search andretrieval, data analysis, document productionand distribution, and in business processes andtransactions. However, office workers preferpaper for reading, annotating, and sharing ofinformation in face-to-face discussions. Manybusiness processes still rely on paper forincoming forms-based documents, such asinvoices and contracts as well as customercorrespondence. In some cases paper copiesneed to be stored for legal reasons, and paper (or microfilm) is by many people andorganizations still considered the safest formfor long-term archival of documents.

Unfortunately, once a digital document istransferred to paper, much information is lostor at least put into a format that makes it moredifficult to retrieve digitally. While scanningand optical character recognition (OCR)usually allow the textual content to beretrieved, the structural information thatdescribes how a document is broken down intoits constituent parts may for example be visibleto the human eye (and mind), but be verydifficult for scanning software to discover. The significance of a highlighted passage, or the red edit marks on a paper, could bedifficult to automatically analyze.

A Document Lifecycle Management view isuseful to examine each step in the documentworkflow process, and to identifyopportunities to make information indocuments more easily actionable within anorganization’s document intensive businessprocesses. A document lifecycle is composedof four fundamental stages of documentworkflow: Capture, Manage, Store andDeliver. Each stage can be further defined to support a set of servicesnecessary to support the transfer of paperdocument content to electronic form, and toroute and make use of the information forspecific applications.

IT managers, especially in small- and middle-sized organizations, are faced with costcontrol demands and strained resources. Theymay be daunted by skyrocketing standards fordocument management, cost control, security,and workflow efficiency. IT may be lookingfor targeted point solutions to test, beforedeciding on broader deployments or addingmore extended capabilities for their users.

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DocumentLifecycle Management

Deliver

Manage

Store

Capture

2 Richard Harper and Abigail Sellen: “Paper-Supported Collaborative Work,” Technical Report Xerox Research Centre Europe, 1995. Later also published in Harper and Sellen: “The Myth of the Paperless Office,” The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2002.


IT

The question is how to select products,software, and services to support thecomplexity of information transfer in cost-effective ways; systems that are readilydeployed, easily adopted and readily managed.IT organizations understand structured data,but may not fully understand how to manageunstructured documents as effectively. ITmanagers increasingly need to identify partners who do, and who can offer a varietyof entry points, industry specific applications,and targeted solutions. And, IT must demand more value from their current infrastructure investments.

MFPs are often the underutilized office asset,and can be incorporated into printing andimaging infrastructures to control costs, andextend business capabilities. MFPs are wellpositioned to support Capture solutions andsupport document scanning and distribution aswell as fully featured, shared printing offramps. For example, a contract could be couldbe scanned and then distributed using the MFPto multiple destinations through the initiationof a workflow. Destinations within theworkflow could include email recipients, faxrecipients, remote printers, file share or to anEnterprise Content Management system suchas EMC Documentum, Microsoft® SharePoint,or Xerox DocuShare®.

MFP technology should be evaluated for itsability to support multiple applicationsconcurrently (true multitasking) with noimpact on system performance and taskefficiency. And, they should be assessed as apart of overall printing infrastructureinvestments, to ensure the right mix ofcapabilities and features are in place for givenworkgroups and their applications.

Management and Delivery solutions, asembedded or add-on software modules forMFPs or managed services, should be wellintegrated with the MFP platform and supportexisting IT desktop applications, be easilydeployed, and readily customizable. Thesesolutions can support the automatic routing ofpaper-based and electronic documents, usageaccounting and tracking, and their electronicmanagement for later use. A wide variety ofapplications and vendors are now working with scan-enabled MFPs.

Smarter Document Management in the officeenvironment looks at the most effective path to business solutions that can be deployed at apace and scale that’s affordable and manageableby IT departments. The advantages of end-to-end, plug and play solutions, certifiedwith a single contact for support are importantconsiderations during the technology andpartner selection process.

Information life-cyclemanagement has nowbecome possible. Intelligentdocuments that have a lifecycle built into them andtravel on the backbone of enterprise transactionsystems are beginning to appear. Contentcomprehension, digitalrights, and integration willcontinue to evolve and willbe built into an increasingarray of “smart” applications.

- Richard V. Heiman and Anthony C.Picardi, “Worldwide Software 2004-2008Forecast Summary,” IDC, August 2004.

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3. Managed DocumentServices and PlatformsFor high volume, repetitive documentprocessing in office settings, and whenmission-critical workflows include analyzingdocument content, organizations areincreasingly considering outsourcing to reduce associated costs, to better utilizeinternal resources, and eliminate complexity. Managed services within Smarter DocumentManagement in the office environmentframework provide value add documentworkflow resources using people, technology,and business process redesign. These servicesestablish the necessary technology investmentsthat allow parts of mission-critical workflowsand support activities to be outsourced andmanaged as a hosted service.

Organizations considering managed services are best to align with a partner who brings a set of integrated, scalable tools and methodologies to evaluate the officeenvironment and their work processes. Theassessment should optimize the organizations’assets, provide a means for asset tracking, and lower overall total costs, while offering asingle acquisition point for new investments.Smart Document Management in the officeenvironment for managing document servicesincludes a single point of service support forall output devices, regardless of manufacturer.

Services offered should include intelligent,proactive supplies order management, along with device relationship management support systems. The most functional DeviceRelationship Management systems today offerremote diagnostic tools to eliminate systemdowntime, a robust range of fleet and devicemanagement tools, and customized usage and other reporting systems. The managedservices provider must offer a sufficientlybroad range of enterprise help desk and enduser support services, both on site and offsitethat can be tailored and optimized for specific environments.

Customized document imaging support, andassociated services for office environments can also be included in the managed solution.These services both design and implement costefficient solutions for capturing, managing,retrieving and distributing information intodigital repositories. Services can includesolutions testing and deployment, end usertraining, and ongoing support and upgradeplanning, as needs evolve over time.

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Managed DocumentServices and Platforms

Smarter DocumentManagement in the OfficeTo implement Smarter Document Managementin today’s workplace, CIOs and IT managers must:

• Adopt new work processes while leveragingcurrent technology investments

• Ensure and increase the security levelssurrounding document assets

• Maintain tight control over costs

Device and fleet management solutions helporganizations understand and control printingand imaging costs, secure document assets, andfully leverage current technology investments:

• Office assessment resources providebusinesses fact-based methodology and data to make critical decisions

• Intelligent device management tools andsoftware for IT departments:

• Remote intelligence and proactive support

• Comprehensive fleet managementutilities supporting management ofprinters and MFPs, regardless of device manufacturer

• A fully managed approach to imaging andoutput: asset management services includingasset tracking; asset optimization; outputmanagement services addressing devicemanagement; break-fix management; andsupplies management

In Document Lifecycle Management for theoffice, organizations must possess scalable andcustomizable solutions to capture, manage anddeliver documents, to meet the needs of small-and middle-sized organizations, and for largeglobal enterprises with document-intensiveworkflows involving both paper and electronicdocuments. Key offerings include:

• A scalable range of hardware platformswhich are highly secure, and highlyproductive, true multitasking systems toserve as both capture and delivery ramps tosupport a wide range of document workflowapplications, and networked printers fordistributed workgroup printing

• Transformation, and document routing software

• A robust portfolio of software andcapabilities for high accuracy opticalcharacter recognition, forms managementand document routing, tracking andaccounting, analyzing and processingdocument content, and highly specializedapplications such as emergency notificationsupport, all fully integrated with MFPplatforms using open SDKs and APIs

• Easy access, storage and tracking solutionsusing an enterprise content managementsystem with enablers to deliver documents toother web interfaces, secure repositories, orto centralized production services ordistributed printers


IT

Smart multifunction product technology allowsorganizations to reduceoutput costs and simplifypaper-intensive processes.Some smart MFPs offer atotal solution for documentstorage, indexing andretrieval applications.

– D. Dixon, “Smart MFPs ImproveDocument Processes and SaveBusinesses Money,” Gartner Research,January 4, 2005.

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The FutureXerox will continue to dedicate its R&D andresources to simplify office work processesand reduce the overall costs of working withinformation and documents. These are some ofthe unique investigations from Xeroxresearchers:

• New technologies to provide further supportfor secure printing and scanning, particularlyadapted to mobile users from origin todestination. Leveraging the communication,storage and computing capabilities of newmobile devices, secure documentmanagement may be possible through aseparate channel for transporting decryptionkeys.

• Technologies for securing paper documentsto guarantee the authenticity of printeddocuments. One such technology is the useof Glossmarks. Glossmarks exploit the half-tone differences to embed markings on adocument, clearly visible to the human eyeas gloss variations, but not reproduciblethrough scanning or copying.

• Using color marking to attract the reader’sattention to the most important parts of adocument. This software service uses linguisticprocessing and injects color mark-ups priorto the printing of a document. To analyze a large collection of documents for keyinformation, users will enter keywords of the facts they want to extract (e.g. companynames, technical words, dates), and thedigital and scanned documents are printed,highlighting the facts in the preferred colors.

610P723880Copyright © 2005 Xerox Corporation. Xerox®, Smarter Document Managementsm and DocuShare® are trademarks of Xerox Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. Microsoft® is a trademark of Microsoft, Inc. XOGWP-05UA

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To learn more about Smarter DocumentManagement, please visit the web atwww.xerox.com, or contact a Xeroxrepresentative at 1-800-ASK-XEROX.