Software comes to grips with the reality of paper
Computers are everywhere, yet the paperless office seems no closer than it did 10 years ago. I have two computers on my desk, another in my bag and yet another in the office. Still, the table behind me sags under a stack of papers.
So the question arises - how do you deal with this mixture of electronic and paper-based information in a business environment? Small businesses probably handle this problem the same way they have for years - with a filing cabinet.
In most companies, computers are used whenever possible. But for many tasks, particularly those which involve a signature, paper moves from desk to desk as it has done since the days when paper was the hottest new piece of technology on the market.
In small companies, that computer probably will be running some off-the-shelf program such as FileMaker Pro or a DOS-based accounting program.
But what happens when you need to deal with thousands of employees, using thousands of computers and pushing mountains of paper? Add a few zeros to that off-the-shelf price tag (we are talking six or seven figures here, depending on your corporation's needs), and you can move up to something like InfoImage from Unisys.
InfoImage almost defies description. The documentation I received described it as a 'solution'. A bit vague, but considering the fact that each InfoImage system is customised to fit the user's needs, it may be the most succinct.
The trend, as far as moving towards a paperless work flow is concerned, has been simply to make electronic versions of those documents which traditionally were paper-based.
Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF) format is a good example of this. InfoImage takes the necessity of paper into account. After all, it's just not practical to sit a customer down in front of a computer and say 'please fill out this form'. Signing on the dotted line is not very practical, either.
InfoImage takes paper-based documents, scans them and drops them into a database. The database can handle images, text and any other type of document you would care to throw at it such as an HTML document, PDF or word processor files.
Rather than simply archiving the documents, the InfoImage database is used as a work-flow platform. A scanned loan application, for example, could be moved from department to department along with other electronic data related to that particular customer.
A traditional work flow is maintained, but rather than moving piles of paper from desk to desk, electronic files are moved from user to user through the database system.
Meanwhile, original paper documents can be locked away safely in an inexpensive storage facility, outside of the company's high-priced office space.
This new system, which runs on either Windows NT or Unix servers and a Windows based front-end, also has reduced the amount of time needed to create a highly individualised InfoImage system, Unisys says.
A set of tools developed by Unisys allows them to create a custom user interface in a matter of weeks rather than months as was the case before. The interface can allow users to access not only the InfoImage system, but outside data sources such as credit bureau computers, or the Internet.
InfoImage is a big-budget solution. I didn't even bother to ask if those six or seven digits were in US or Hong Kong dollars. But it moves impressively beyond the unintuitive DOS-based systems that companies are used to.
Unisys' emphasis on work flow and making the computer system match the company practices, rather than changing a company's way of doing business to fit the computer's needs, also shows an important coming-of-age for information technology.
I suspect all of this intuitiveness will come at a price, however, and I'm not talking about those seven figures.
If you are going to run Windows as your front-end system, just ensure your employees know where the reset button is.
For many tasks, paper moves from desk to desk as it has [always] done
