One on One with David Smith of Xerox

David Smith is vice president and general manager for Xerox DocuShare enterprise content management (ECM) software. Under his guidance, DocuShare has sustained year-over-year growth consistently outpacing the market, and added key technology partnerships with Sun Microsystems, IBM, NASA, Dralasoft and Verity (now both under Autonomy, Inc.), and others. We asked Smith if companies were truly giving up the paper habit and how Xerox has adapted to that change.

FCM: Xerox is a company traditionally steeped in paper workflows built around copy machines. How do you make the transition to content management and a paperless flow?

DS: We’ve certainly moved beyond the “box” as our business today rests on an impressive array of services aimed at improving productivity and streamling the way organizations interact, manage and share information. Content management is an important part of our business and that of our clients. We are helping companies eliminate time-consuming manual tasks, increase access to critical information and reduce operational costs--all of which improves efficiency and productivity.

We provide imaging, indexing, archiving and other document management services via 20 imaging centers worldwide, servicing large companies in 160 countries. Xerox DocuShare further supports this effort--the ECM industry-recognized tool captures, manages and shares documents globally.

FCM: How much demand is there still for paper-based products like copy machines?

Several years ago it was predicted that the paperless office was "just around the corner" but today, print is anything but dead. Going completely paperless simply isn't an option for most companies. In fact 2.24 trillion pages were printed in offices worldwide last year. Xerox is seeing more organizations adopt a less paper or "paper–light" strategy, where multifunction printers that scan, print, copy and fax are paired with an ECM solution to digitize documents. Leveraging a content management platform like DocuShare allows people to strike that balance--printing when they need to, but at the same time transitioning to digital by scanning documents, sharing them via the web, and automating processes for greater efficiency. This saves companies significant time and money.

FCM: I read recently that scanning is growing in spite of the economy? Are you seeing this?

DS: Yes. The printing infrastructure can be a powerful source of cost savings and because of this we’ve seen an uptick in scanning devices that help better manage volumes of documents--and the costs associated with printing, sharing and updating them. We’re also seeing increased interest in going the next step, automating processes that handle scanned documents. For example, Western Forest Products of British Columbia deployed a Xerox DocuShare ECM solution to process invoices from its suppliers and now saves about $20,000 monthly by scanning their documents directly into a workflow that cuts the time to process and pay invoices from a week to a day. For high volume customers, DocuShare can store up to 50 million documents.

FCM: What are the major obstacles that companies face when trying to remove paper from the work flow? Is it more cultural (won't give it up) or practical (how it gets done)?

DS: It’s both. Breaking paper-dependent workers of their printing habits can be difficult. Therefore, you have to educate employees about the ways ECM can help them get their work done easier, faster and more accurately. Once the benefits of ECM to their daily workload are realized, they will become more comfortable with electronic documents and more apt to take advantage of them.

FCM: How is Xerox incorporating Enterprise 2.0 functionality into its products and software?

DS: We recognize that Enterprise 2.0 is transforming the way companies do business on a number of different levels--from how they communicate internally to how they develop and market their products. The common thread between Enterprise 2.0 and ECM is the access to information at worker's finger tips and more social ways to share and collaborate on this content. With DocuShare 6.5, users can upload content directly to the system via email, write and manage blogs and wikis, and setup document workflows with the routing and approval tool. The DocuShare ECM platform incorporates Web 2.0 elements, and will continue to embrace Web 2.0 standards as a critical path to enabling new ways to communicate, access information quickly and rapidly develop business applications.