Electronic document management used to be used only in rare, critical instances. But the hardware and software technologies that make document management possible have now been perfected. The technological improvements, combined with rapidly falling costs, should lead to greater availability and wider use of document management systems. Documents in electronic form can be much cheaper to store, search for and circulate, and much easier to protect from accidental destruction and loss. The ease with which they can be copied and disseminated for a very low cost provides an additional incentive for their use. With small, active documents that are requested repeatedly, it's possible to realize savings of 20 to 50 per cent on processing costs if the documents are in electronic form. The gains are even greater – 30 to 70 per cent – if the documents are scanned at source. Placing documents at the disposal of a group is the first step in the evolution toward groupware and workflow applications.

Cost of storage space

The annual cost for storing a paper page is two to eight cents, while the cost of scanning that page is 10 to 80 cents.
Scanning of paper documents can't be justified solely by savings on storage costs.

In the majority of cases, it's possible to achieve a 50-per-cent saving on filing costs.
For the scanning and filing cycle, the electronic system may cost 32 per cent (11 cents) more than the manual system. It can only be justified by subsequent savings on search operations.
Costs vary from 10 to 76 cents per document.

Search Costs

The costs of one search cycle are cut in half.
In the case of accessing archives, the costs are cut by one-third.
Savings per cycle: 30 to 70 cents.
A single electronic search cycle pays for the extra cost of scanning two pages of text. Documents frequently searched will save more.

Only electronic searching offers a response time of seconds instead of minutes, hours or days.
Search time is cut by a factor of two or even a hundred, and sometimes much more.
Costly search operations become economically viable.

Time Required for Dissemination

Electronic messaging guarantees routing delays of only a few minutes to a few hours.
Documents can be made available on a shared server in a matter of minutes

Savings of 80 to 90 per cent are possible with electronic documents.
Once there are at least five recipients, scanning costs are recovered through savings on dissemination.

Helps users keep track of changes between versions of a document.
Ensures the maintenance of compositional links between documents and their parts.
Always delivers the latest version by default.
Reconstructs any previous version on request.

Files can be consulted during processing.
Processing can be carried out in parallel, reducing processing time.
New documents can be added to a file during processing.

Selective access control becomes possible.
The ability to make copies at low cost provides complete protection against loss or destruction of documents.