Are you still struggling with physical records management, with paper?
We produced our first computerised records management system in 1984 (when our company was called GMB) and it was called DocFind. It was marketed by the Burroughs Corporation initially to about 100 clients and then we stared marketing DocFind direct and sold it to about another 2,000 clients.
Every one of those clients wanted DocFind just to manage physical records, paper, file folders and archive boxes. There was little or no demand for document imaging and workflow and the term electronic document management had yet to be invented. Office automation was in its infancy. We for example, wrote our letters on an Apple IIe using a word processor called WordStar running under CP/M.
In 1986 we released RecFind, a major remake of the DocFind product. This product was initially marketed by ourselves and NEC and it too focussed just on managing physical records.
However, even in 1986 we knew we had a bigger job to do with the general acceptance of document scanners and workflow so we added imaging and workflow to our product and starting trying to convince our customers and prospective customers to reduce the size of their paper mountain and even to start planning for a ‘Paperless Office’.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s I delivered numerous papers extolling the value of the paperless office and worked hard to convince my customers to make the move to Electronic Document and Records Management (EDRMS).
In the mid-1990s the industry discovered ‘Knowledge Management’ (KMS) and industry consultants lost interest in EDRMS and instead heavily promoted the virtues and benefits of KMS, whatever it was. Maybe this was the time organizations lost interest in eradicating paper as senior IT staff and consultants moved on to more interesting projects like KMS.
In 1995 I delivered my first paper on a totally integrated information management system or what I called at the time the ‘It Does Everything Application’ (IDEA). In 1995 I truly thought the age of physical records management was almost over and that the western world at least would move to fully-automated, paperless processes.
How wrong I was 19 years ago.
Today, despite the advanced functionality of our RecFind 6 Product Suite, almost all of my customers still manage physical records with RecFind 6. At least half of the inquiries that come in via our website are for systems to manage physical records.
There is more paper in the world today than there has ever been and organizations all over the world still struggle with managing paper, vast amounts of paper.
Luckily for us, we never succumbed to the temptation to remove the paper handling features from our products. Instead, we added to them with each subsequent release and redesign/rewrite of RecFind. We had to provide upwards compatibility for our clients as they still managed mountains of paper both onsite and offsite.
Being a little older and wiser now I am never again going to predict the paperless office. I will provide advanced physical records management functionality for my clients as long as they require it.
I haven’t given up the fight but my job is to address the real needs of my customers and they tell me and keep telling me that they need to manager paper, mainly file folders full of paper and archive boxes full of file folders. They need to manage paper onsite in shelving and offsite in warehouses with millions of boxes and we do it all.
We manage paper from creation to destruction and throughout the whole lifecycle. We apply retention schedules and classification systems and we track anything and everything with barcodes and barcode readers. We have enhanced our products to cater for every need and we are now probably responsible for millions of tonnes of paper all over the world.
I still hope for a paperless world but I very much doubt that I am going to see it in my lifetime.
So, if you are still struggling with how to best manage all your physical records please don’t despair, you are most certainly not alone!