Transcript Moving Towards A Paperless Work Place

Change Management
Moving Towards a Paperless Work Place
David Lash
Project
Manager
StickyDigital
Brief History of the Paperless
Workplace
•
Early 1970’s Xerox at the time an
industry leader in computer networking and
printing declares that by 1975 “ a digital
workplace will all but eliminate the need for
paper.”
•
1980’s IBM develops desktop terminals
that can access large mainframe computers
in the workplace.
Brief History
•
Mid 1990’s Al Gore creates the Internet.
Internet gives us access to large amounts
information in the work place. Internet
based businesses spring up overnight.
• Late 1990’s The Dot Com Fallout.
Present
• Businesses are bit suspicious of investing in
Internet technologies as a business tool.
• We still have access to large amounts of
unstructured information.
• We use email to distribute and print office
memos that were once placed on our desks.
Where is the paperless office?
The Paperless Office- Where Is It?
Answer: There’s no such thing.
Employees, on average, are printing 33 internet pages
each day.
•For a company with 100 employees, that’s 3300 pages
per day.
•For a company of 5000 employees, that’s 165,000
pages per day.
•Printing is costing corporations an amount equal to 1%
3% of their revenue.
Where do we start?
• Instead of striving for a paperless workplace
think about how to maximize the benefits of
paper in a digital format?
Reduce the Paper in your Process
& Organize
•
Use Internet based technologies (web
browser) to:
• Reduce the physical transmission and
printing of paper.
Centralize the storage of information.
• Increase the availability, organization and
retrieval of relevant information across your
organization
Key Benefits
Increased productivity - reduce the amount of
time employees spend on a task or retrieving
information.
• Space savings- how many square feet of file
cabinets are taking up expensive office space?
• Cost savings- centralized web based storage and
access to information can reduce printing and
mailing costs from 20%- 30%.
• Custom solutions faster and more cost effectively.
(The MS windows paradox).
Drawbacks
•
Easy to create a paperless solution that
causes more work in a different format.
•
Reliance on pesky computers and
computer networks. They do go down from
time to time.
•
Can be difficult to implement due to
corporate culture and employee skill level.
Example of Paperless Process
NATEF- National Automotive Technicians
Education Foundation
An association that certifies the education
standard’s of schools that teach automotive
and truck repair.
Problem
In order to become a certified school such
as Dave’s Monster Truck University. A
school had to complete the following time
consuming process.
Process Before

Call the NATEF office and request the
appropriate application.
 NATEF faxes or mails the application to Dave’s
Monster Truck University.
 Administrator at school fills out application and
faxes or mails back application with payment
information.

NATEF staff must check for errors and
omissions in application and process payment.
Process Before
• Application faxed or mailed by NATEF to a
3rd party examiner that must review the
application and visit the school site for an
inspection before the application is
accepted.
The Solution
Build a new section upon the current
NATEF website. “Online Applications”
Combine the application and payment
process.
Reduce the amount of time it takes for
NATEF staff to fulfill an application
New Process
Applicant fills out application and submits
payment in a single online process.
• Errors and omissions are greatly reduced with the
use of required fields within the online form.
Prevents user from accidentally submitting a
partially filled out application.
• Applicant’s payment is approved and processed in
real time.
New Process Con’t

Application is submitted to a secure
web based database.

System automatically generates email
notifications to appropriate NATEF staff
when a new application has been submitted.

NATEF staff notifies 3rd Party Examiner
to review the application online through a
secure web browser interface.
Loudoun Hospital
A community not-for-profit hospital in one
of the fastest growing counties in the nation.
Problem- In order to register a patient into the
hospital for an operation or procedure that
requires an overnight stay, hospital staff had to
go through the following registration process.
Loudoun Hospital Process
•
Patient schedules procedure date with
doctor.
•
Hospital staff checks doctors white
board many times a day for new procedures
that have been scheduled.
•
Hospital staff calls the patient on the
phone and gathers the needed information
or faxes application to patient.
Loudoun Hospital Con’t

Patient fills out application and mails
or faxes back to hospital.

Hospital staff checks for errors and
omissions and resends to patient if
necessary.

Hospital staff enters application
information into a legacy system.
Solution
To improve customer service and reduce the amount
of time it was taking to collect the needed
information to register the patient.
A patient registration section was added prominently
to the home page of the hospital’s website.
New Process

Patient schedules procedure with doctor.
Doctor enters patient information into centralized
calendar. Doctor gives patient brochure (option)
on how to register for admittance to the hospital
using the website.

Central calendar notifies hospital registration
staff (via email) when a physician has scheduled a
patient for a procedure and the patients contact
information.
New Process Con’t

Patient fills out and submits secure
registration application online. Errors and
omissions are reduced by using pop up text
boxes with simple definitions of medical
terminology currently used on the form.

System notifies appropriate hospital
staff that a new application is ready for
review. Staff accesses application through
secure web browser interface.
Finally
• After reviewing the application the hospital
staff can submit the application information
directly into the legacy system at the touch
of a button.
Questions to help Identify

Does your organization rely on gathering information
from customers?
 How much time does it take to gather and enter this
information into a central location?
How critical is it that multiple people have access to
the same information?
How long does it take for your organization to process
payments such as membership or registration fees?
• Currently, how frequently are you communicating with
your customers?
Internal Paper Organization
We’ve looked at few examples of how to
remove the paper and streamline a few
specific processes that have customer
interaction. Now let’s take a look a way to
organize information within an organization
Intranets- What are they?
Intranets are essentially private company websites
that are specifically designed for the employee’s
of an organization to:

Facilitate communication (recent news, group
email lists, remote workers)

Knowledge management (combat brain drain)

Employee management (benefits, training,
company manuals and policies, online brochures.
Key Features

Easy to update information (no
technical expertise)

Only accessible by employees

They Evolve.
Intranet Example
Problem
TechAssure is a national trade association that
provides Insurance and Risk Management services
to high tech companies. The member agencies are
located in different geographic locations through
out North America. They needed to be able to
communicate effectively and manage the vast
amounts of knowledge capital generated by their
industry.
Solution
Created a secure intranet site that can be
accessed 24 x 7 with the following features.

Employee contact list with the ability to
send group email.

Recent News and Events that can be
updated through a simple web browser
interface.
Intranet Feature Con’t

Document Management System. Allows
agents and principals to easily upload white
papers, PPT presentations, and other documents
by specific category to further the education of its
members and for the interest of prospective
clients.

Forum Board- Allows members to post a
question to other members. Any replies to the
question are automatically posted to the forum for
future reference.
Questions to Consider
• Do you have multiple copies of outdated
documentation?
• Percentage of storage space to people
space?
• People doing repetitive tasks?
• Email reliance for Documentation?
• Cubicle walls covered with paper?
• Staff uses Rolodex’s
Implementing Change- The Hard
Part
One of the key factors in implementing a
change in any organization is having the
support of leadership. Because this can be a
presentation unto itself we will assume for
the sake of this presentation that leadership
has identified that there needs to be a
change in a process and is supportive of a
need for that change.
Implementing Change
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Identification
Involvement
Metrics
Scope Limit
Training
Implementation
Feedback
Continued Monitoring
Identification
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What isn’t working?
How many people are working on process?
How much paper is being moved?
Don’t discuss Technology!
How do you want to use your information?
Involvement
• Who uses the process?
• How do they use it?
• Invite participation at beginning phases /
ownership. (most commonly overlooked)
• Small group with individuals who have
desire to participate.
Metrics
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How will we judge success?
Time Savings?
Reduced Transaction Costs?
Increased Revenue?
Scope Limit
• Resistance to change and acceptance can be
achieved by limiting the scope of a system.
• Design solution to allow an increase in
functionality. “A wish list”
• Habits form from use in about 30 days.
Training
• Setup a training regiment before
implementation.
• Many different formats to choose from, one
on one, online, and interactive formats.
Roll Out
• Test your new process within a single
department.
• Write down what works well and what
doesn’t
• Set a date for review and comment.
IMPORTANT.
Feedback
Require users to give individual feedback on
new process in writing.
Address problems or concerns with process.
Fix functional aspects of system
Set date for organizational Roll Out.
Last but not Least- Easy Access
to Information for Training
• Create a training regiment to train new
employee’s
• Reference for current employee’s
• Online training
• Web based interactive movies.
Continued Monitoring
• How has the process worked?
• Did it meet the objectives that were stated at
the beginning of process?
• What should we have done differently.
Wrap Up
• Many options for web based processes.
• Don’t get caught up in the technology
needed for solution.
• Focus on what’s not working and how you
would like it to work.
• Be patient.
In the Interest of Saving Tree’s
If you found any or part of this presentation
informative or in the least bit interesting
you may download it at
www.stickydigital.com
Questions?
Hopefully I have some answers!