As one who has advocated going to the paperless office over quite a few
years I have to come to the defense of a paper document system when it is
appropriate.  This is where I must disagree with Jesse on his argument in
the defense of digital based on the costs of a paper document system.

I don't agree that the cost of digital is less than paper.  Managing your
document in a digital format may be in excess of the maintaining paper
documents.

For example:

Costs:

If you are managing your documents in-house you incur equipment, software,
and human resources to manage the documents in some sort of document
management system.  With the mergers of OCR, Scanning, and RM companies over
the past few years the cost of a system has gone up from in the late 90's
from about $10,000. (Entry level system) to around $50,000, excluding
conversions fees.  Higher depending on the number of seats you are going to
purchase.  

Then you have the annual maintenance fees (10-15% of the original cost or
$5000/7500), plus equipment upgrades, software upgrades, etc.

Let's say I can put 1000 boxes into storage for $3.00 a year per box or
$3000 fee per year with a retention period of 7 years.  It will cost me
$21,000 over the 7 year period vs. the $35000-50000 for the cost of
maintaining a digital system.  That doesn't include the cost of equipment
and software upgrades over this same period for the digital system.

I agree with Jessie IF the documents are managed properly and remain on-line
and/or can be downloaded without a problem (equipment, software or human),
then search and retrieval will definitely be in the favor of digital.  You
will still have the human factor in search and retrieval.

The biggest problem I see with digital is cost to implement a system.  I
work in the public and private sectors and have found the cost to be the
biggest road block for the implementation of an electronic document
management system.  

Just my thoughts on the subject...

Bob Dalton, CRM
Dalton Consulting

From: Records Management Program [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
Of Jesse Wilkins

Subject: Re: RAIN Article that seems pertinent to recent discussions...

And in defense of digital:

Costs:
- cost of paper storage, particularly given the volume of information which
must be maintained regardless of format
- cost of peoples to find the paper, or call the offsite vendor and have
records pulled and delivered
- cost to scan the printed copy of a born-digital document

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