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Green Content- ECM an enabler

Author :

K.V. Rajesh

Co-Author :

Manish Soota

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Introduction

Content is generated in every walk of our life in different forms like paper, faxes, eMails, social networks, forms, web pages, audio, video and in many other forms. The exponential growth of content is witnessed every year and is bringing several challenges to the organizations and environment.

Paper is still holding a majority of organizations information and excessive use of paper is adversely effecting the environment with the destruction of trees, which is the most wonderful natural resource resulting in global warming and posing threat to future generations. Organizations today have realized the importance of managing their content efficiently to safeguard their bottom-line and environment. Managing unstructured content, which constitutes 80% of the content generated is more challenging and needs better management.

The advancement of IT has helped in mitigating these challenges in different ways and Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solutionshave witnessed their clear leadership in this.

This presentation will focus on defining what is Green Content, explaining the adverse impact of paper usage on Environment and ECM can help organizations in their green initiatives.

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What is unstructured

content?Unstructured content includes paper documents, eMails, word documents, images, web pages, audios, videos and many other content types which reside outside the scope of structured databases. Since they don’t follow a structure it is very difficult to manage this type of content.

Fig 1 : Unstructured Content

Note : Respective Trademarks belong to Facebook, Tweeter, Adobe, AutoCad and Microsoft.

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What is unstructured

content?• Majority of potentially usable business information originates in unstructured form

• Unstructured data is growing at 61.7% CAGR while structured content is growing at 21.8%

• By 2013, 507 Billion emails will be sent each day

• 4.6 Billon Mobile Phones World Wide

• Twitter process 7 terabytes of data every day

• Facebook process 10 terabytes of data every day

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What is green content?

The unstructured content which is in electronic form and if managed properly will use less paper, printers, faxes, photocopiers, transportation and physical storage in its lifecycle can be termed as green content. Green content helps the environment on a sustainable basis with minimal carbon footprint.

Fig 2 : Be eco-friendly with green content

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How is Paper Impacting

our EnvironmentPaper is an essential stationary in every office and 95% of business information is still stored on paper. We have been hearing the term “paperless office” for many years now but paper consumption has tripled in the last decade. The advancement of IT has not reduced our paper use; instead, we print more and copy more adding to the paper pile. An estimated 115 billion sheets of paper are used annually for personal computers. Traditionally record keeping constitutes more than 90% of all office activity. Studies indicate that 80% of paper filed is never referenced again. A great deal of time is being wasted printing, sorting, purging, and filing paper. Paperintensive processes are highly inefficient, increases processing time and prone to loss of information during the process. Though paperless office is a still a myth but there is a clear environmental need for it.

Fig 3 : Deforestation, air and water pollution for paper manufacturing

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How is Paper Impacting

our EnvironmentNot just the consumption of trees for paper production is causing environmental problems, even the paper making process is hazardous to the environment. Paper mills are one of the worst polluters to air, water and land. Each year millions of pounds of highly toxic chemicals such as toluene, methanol, chlorine dioxide, hydrochloric acid and formaldehyde are released into the air and water from papermaking plants around the world.

• It takes one 15-year old tree to produce half a box of paper

• Approximately 324 liters of water is used to produce 1 KG of paper

• Paper manufacturing is the largest industrial user of water perpound of finished product

• Paper manufacturing is the 3rd largest user of fossil fuels worldwide

• One tree can filter up to 60 pounds of pollutants from the air each year which is compromised for producing paper

• Rainforests once covered 14% of the earth's land surface; now they cover a mere 6% and experts estimate that the last remaining rainforests could be consumed in less than 40 years

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How is Paper Impacting

our Environment• The US uses approximately 68 million trees each year to produce17 billion catalogues and 65 billion pieces of direct mail.

• Every tree provides oxygen enough for 3 people to breathe.

• Paper products use about 35% of the world's annual commercial wood harvest

• When paper rots or is composted it emits methane gas which is 25 times more toxic than CO2

Fig 4 : Global Warming – Impact of paper on Environment

Courtesy : http://mairedubhtx.wordpress.com/2011/05/28/global-warming/,http://idiotsandgenious.blogspot.com/2011/06/world-alert-global-warming-is-changing.html

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What is ECM

Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is the strategies, methods and tools used to capture, manage, store, preserve, and deliver content and documents related to organizational processes. ECM tools and strategies allow the management of an organization's unstructured information, wherever that information exists. – by AIIM

Fig 5 : Unified ECM Platform

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What is ECM

ECM offers an unified platform for scanning & capture, document management, search, workflow management, collaboration, web content management, records management and digital asset management. ECM technologies have matured over years and widened their offerings. Several organizations across industries have been benefited from ECM in optimizing their processes, enhancingcustomer satisfaction, improving productivity, reducing cost, increasing profitability and saving environment.

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How ECM enables

Green ContentECM enables organizations to manage their unstructured content in its entire lifecycle from creation, sharing, usage, archival till destruction. Among all IT solutions ECM is a leading enabler of Green Content by reducing organizations dependency on paper.

Many organizations worldwide have realized the importance of Green Content and implemented ECM as an enabler. ECM has several benefits to offer to organizations, but in this article we will majorly focus on how ECM helps the environment with Green Content by identifying key areas where paper usage is more.

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How ECM enables

Green ContentThrough scanning paper documents and drawings are converted to electronic files which can be easily shared with multiple users hence reducing the need for taking copies and printouts for sharing & processing the content. Paper should be scanned earliest at the point of its origination to reduce or eliminate the need to physically manage it in the process. For example a financial institution keeps a copy of the customer document at the branch location and ships the original to central / regional office where further processing takes place. But if the branches scan the document as soon as they receive it from the customer they can immediately share the scanned images with their central / regional office and can save on taking copy and shipping. In case of discrepancy in the document they are sent back to branch office which in turn consumes fuel during transpiration and increases the processing time.

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How ECM enables

Green ContentKnowledge workers have the habit of taking printout of draft letters / documents for editing and taking approvals before the final document is ready. In this process the document goes through several iterations and are printed, copied and circulated several times. ECM helps knowledge workers to collaborate while creating a document allowing users to jointly work on different versions of the document before the final one is created. At the same time ECM also offers the traditional flexibility of highlighting, underlining, adding annotations / comments even on the electronic documents.

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How ECM enables

Green ContentAll organizations, irrespective of whether they are into Government & Public Services or Financial Services or Insurance or power & utility or Healthcare or manufacturing or engineering & construction or educational or logistics or non-profit, all of them, have paper intensive processes which are detrimental to the environment andorganizational bottom line. Some of the paper intensive processes are Accounts Payable & Receivables process, Account Opening Process, Employee records management, Contracts Management, Drug Discovery, Citizen Services, Health care, Claims processes and many more. Organizations should identify their respective paper intensive processes and automate it with the help of ECM. The Business Process Management and Workflow functionality of ECM helps organizations in automating and optimizing their document intensive processes by eliminating their dependency on paper

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How ECM enables

Green ContentHeaps of pre printed paper forms are distributed, stored and used in key business processes. Application forms, purchase requisitions, invoices, claims are some of the commonly used pre printed stationeries. Managing pre printed stationary is a herculean task, if not properly planned will result in wastage of the entire stock due to change in structure / content of the form. Sometimes when an organization goes through corporate identity change the entire pre printed stationery is discarded. With eForms these pre printed stationary can be completely eliminated and reduce its impact onenvironment. At the same time eForms offer several advanced features while capturing data with field level validations, calculations, pre population and while logically routing the form effortlessly in the process. After completion of the process eForms are stored in ECM as records for future reference.

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How ECM enables

Green ContentIn modern times eMails are extensively used and becoming de-facto mode of business communication.

Fig 6 : Which of the above would best describe standard practice in your organization for dealing with “important” emails?

Source : State of the ECM Industry 2010, AIIM

Users have the ill practice of taking printout of eMails to file for future

reference and audit purposes. As shown in above figure, still 12%

admit taking printout of eMails for filing as paper. ECM with its eMail

Management functionality automates the process of capturing email

messages as business records, simplifies the retrieval of messages

for compliance purposes, and effectively solves email storage

issues.

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How ECM enables

Green ContentWhen paper documents are sent off-site for archiving, Gartner estimates that only about 1 per cent is ever accessed again. As much as possible organizations should store records electronically and save on physical record keeping. When we store records electronically we don’t print & copy them for storage and in turn saves environment by reducing use of paper, electricity consumed in heating or cooling the record room and fuel consumed in transporting records. Destruction of paper records also generates polluting gases and debris. Record retention policies are equally important since it can reduce unnecessary storage of old records for ages. ECM manages digital and physical records regardless of the system they originate from or reside in throughout their entire lifecycle byclassifying, storing, securing and disposing the records with clearly defined retention policies. This also helps in meeting regulatory demands by safeguarding key records, confidential information and intellectual property.

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Conclusion

Green Content initiatives have sustainable benefits to organizations and society at large. Since we now understand the ill effects of paper on the environment, each one of us should consciously reduce itsconsumption and spread the message for a greener tomorrow.

Like any other major initiatives in an organization this should also be driven from top with clear mandate at all levels. Knowing the contribution of ECM towards Green Content, organizations should strategically plan its rollout by identifying right ECM solution, build a team which is committed to this initiative, find out where paper is heavily used (which can otherwise be managed electronically) andautomate those paper intensive processes from its point of origination.

Apart from significantly contributing to the environment, Green Content also helps organizations in reducing cost, increasing employee & customer satisfaction, increase profitability and complying with statutory requirements.

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References

1.IDC Enterprise Disk Storage Consumption Model" report released in Fall 2009

2.Email Statistics Report, 2009-2013 by The Radicati Group, INC

3.IBM ParterWorld Leadership Conference February 2011

4.iD2comminications : Facts About Paper and Paper Waste, Source : Worldwatch Institute; Environment Canada; American Forest and Paper Association, (Garner, J.W.. Energy Conservation Practices Offer Environmental and Cost Benefits. Pulp & Paper, October 2002); "1996 Statistics, Data Through 1995." American Forest and Paper Association. November 1996; American Forest and Paper Association; North Carolina Office of Waste Reduction and Recycling; The Recycler's Handbook, 1990; International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED)

5.http://www.aiim.org/What-is-ECM-Enterprise-Content-Management