Automation: Keep your eye on the real goal when going 'paperless'

The pioneers of transactional filing recognized that their agency management systems could be used as the sole source of client information and that a conventional filing system was no longer necessary. They didn’t view t-filing as a goal in itself. On the way to the goal–a cultural change in which the agency management system became the primary source for documenting activity–the streamlining benefits of t-filing were a useful, though secondary, consequence. Agents who didn’t understand this approached t-filing as if it were the destination. As a result, some agents failed to reach the real goal.

Similarly, some agents misunderstand the concept of “going paperless.” They think it’s just about getting rid of paper. For example, one agent recently asked my advice on purchasing a scanner. As we spoke about different scanners, I realized that he thought buying the scanner was all there was to going paperless. He intended to keep his paper files and add the scanner so he could find any missing paper documents in an electronic database. All this would have done for him would have been to create more work and more potential for an E&O claim, without improving efficiency. Scanning documents into a database should never be equated with going paperless, and it should never be undertaken simply to create a second filing system. Scanning paper takes time, even with a high-end scanner. Scanning alone will not bring about a net gain in efficiency.