Going Green the Right Way

Going green isn’t just about saving the planet or hopping on the latest bandwagon, it's about the bottom line: save the environment and save money.

Everywhere you look someone is touting their recycling program, their CO2 emission reductions or how they’ve done away with paper invoices or newsletters. These savvy companies are not only reaching their customers at an emotional level (who doesn’t want to save the planet?), but they are increasing their bottom line. The IT organization must adopt a more environmentally friendly stance—it’s simply a matter of doing it now and boasting early adopter success, or getting on board late in the game and potentially disappointing socially responsible customers. This doesn’t mean going green overnight and waking up hugging a tree, but responsible organizations will be expected to demonstrate corporate and social responsibility, and revenues will suffer if they don’t. In these competitive times, your ability to manage resources efficiently will prove a differentiator, as customers with their own green agenda flex their environmental muscle with their wallets.

Did you know…

	A copier, two printers and a fax machine consume 1400 kilowatt-hour (kWh) of energy each year while one MFP that performs all the same functions, uses only 700 kWh annually. Now think about what a fax server will save.
	It’s estimated that 80 percent of the green house gas emissions in New York City are generated by office buildings.

 
Now consider…

	A midsized company with 1,000 employees and $100 million in revenue will produce 30 million pages of paper a year which equates to cutting down 1,369 trees and producing approximately 300,000 pounds of CO2 every year.
	Large companies can use an estimated 400 billion pages of printer paper a year; that’s 18,253,333 trees converted to paper generating four billion pounds of carbon every year for a single company on a single item—paper.

 
What’s the big deal? Carbon dioxide, a significant greenhouse gas, is emitted into the atmosphere as a result of our intensive use of fossil fuels like oil and coal and contributes to global warming. Global warming is a crisis. It may indeed turn out to have, as has been suggested, higher economic costs than both World Wars and the Great Depression combined. In simplistic terms this is ‘not good.’ These practices are not only anti-green; they can leave your profit and loss statement in the red.

WHERE DO YOU START?

Go ahead and take a seat in the board room as Chief Green Officer (CGO). Where do you go green and let your customers know you care? Where do you contribute to the problem and where can you be the solution? You’ve added comingled recycling bins to your break room and paper recycling bins throughout the office, now what? Look to the most egregious deforestation culprit—paper. Paper waste is probably the biggest item in any company's landfill and waste costs. And copiers, printers and fax machines are the fastest growing area of energy consumption. Almost half of the paper used in American offices is for daily use so all of the energy that was put into harvesting, processing and shipping that paper was, in the end, for less than a day's use.

How much money can your business save by reducing its reliance on paper? If an enterprise with 30,000 employees sends and receives an average of two pages per day, they can save $2 million or more per year. The more you digitize your paper and keep it online or in the control of your computer systems, the more money you save. The more secure your information is the more compliant you become.

Here are some basic green concepts to consider:

	Put your records in digital filing cabinets and get rid of the inefficient, space hogging, metal dinosaurs. Once your documents are digitized with MFPs they become searchable, and think about all the energy you would save by being able to search for exactly what you need from your desktop.
	Send faxes from desktop to desktop or from application to desktop and promote easy disaster recovery. Review documents onscreen rather than printing them out.
	Automate your workflows and business processes to reduce the paper trail. By making employees more efficient you use less energy and simply get more done with less.

 
Less paper equates to efficiency, compliance, business continuity and cost savings, but it’s not just the paper that is costing us so much money. It’s also the toner, ink, electricity and other paper related costs. Carl Frappaolo, vice president of market intelligence for AIIM, the international enterprise content management association states that Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs) are going paperless for other reasons, too: "Prices for hardware and software are down and the technology has become easier to use. Enterprises increasingly require that all their suppliers have paperless workflows, and SMBs that do not, lose the enterprise's business.”

Adding to the hard cost savings, other benefits of going paperless include:

	Better collaboration   By digitizing your documents they can be shared on the network and employees have easy access to them for collaboration in real-time with one another, with customers, or with your business partners wherever those offices are located. Better collaboration means that decisions are reached much more quickly and executed more accurately.
	Improved operational efficiencies   By digitizing your documents you can streamline processes like billing, accounting, and other administrative functions and processes. Instead of shuffling papers you can save time, improve accuracy and keep your documents secure.
	Better customer service   By digitizing your documents you can respond to customer inquiries anywhere or anytime. Review the customer file over the network from home or from a remote site and respond immediately.

ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY

Captaris solutions reduce environmental impact across all aspects of an organization, and our partner Hewlett Packard (HP) makes it easy to recycle unwanted computer hardware and printing supplies responsibly. The burgeoning problem of e-waste, generated by discarded high-tech equipment, is a source of growing concern among corporate enterprises, governments, environmental groups and IT industry thought-leaders. Since you will be trading in your fax machines, copiers and printers for a streamlined information management solution, please consider disposing of your unwanted hardware responsibly by taking advantage of the HP Product Return and Recycle Program.

GOING GREEN IN THE REAL WORLD
A greener workplace can mean a lighter ecological footprint, a healthier and more productive place to work and good news for the bottom line. Whether you’re the boss or the employee, whether your office is green already or still waiting to see the light, some practical steps can lay the groundwork for a healthy, low-impact workspace. 

Check out how these Captaris customers 'went green' the RIGHT way!

Luxury Hotel Corporation Takes Next Step Towards a Paperless Business with Captaris® RightFax®
 
Rosen Hotels & Resorts in Florida Integrates RightFax with Enterprise
Applications to Improve Document and Message Management

CHALLENGE   Employee productivity and customer communications were hampered by manual fax processes using stand-alone fax machines; company faced the high cost of faxing and printer hardware when opening a new hotel

SOLUTION   RightFax

INTEGRATION   Microsoft® Exchange Server, Cisco Unified Communications Manager formerly called Cisco CallManager, Canon MFPs

RESULTS New hotel uses paperless fax processes, saving money and time; faster response to customer requests leads to a better guest experience; more than 870 employees now use RightFax for desktop faxing, enhancing their productivity and eliminating hours of fax-related paperwork every day.

Northwestern Ohio County Government Ensures Records Access with Captaris® Alchemy®

Sandusky County Clerk of Courts Plans for Disaster Recovery and Increases Employee
Productivity with Digital Court and Commissioner Records

CHALLENGE   The majority of two million court records had no back-up because microfilm and paper-based retention efforts were laborious and expensive; employees spent up to 60 minutes per day retrieving files from the courthouse attic

SOLUTION   Alchemy

RESULTS   Alchemy “insurance policy” in digital form now replaces microfilm and paper dating back to the mid-1800s; immediate and easy online access for staff and county residents increases employee productivity and enhances public service