Magnum foresees a tremendous opportunity for business improvement that is going largely untapped. Many industry experts consider it the “low-hanging fruit” for significant cost savings and productivity gains. According to IDC, 90 percent of companies can’t estimate their document costs, yet they spend as much as 15 percent of their revenue on document-related activities (1 to 3 percent on output costs alone).

Why are documents not on the radar screen of most organizations? According to Magnum, first, they are enterprise-wide. Secondly not many organizations have senior executives with “Documents” in their title. The result is fragmented responsibility, little or no tracking of total costs and little hope for successfully dealing with the situation. The same IDC study revealed that of those organizations that can’t estimate their document costs, 60 percent have started initiatives to reduce those costs.

We believe most of those initiatives will probably fail because they will be based strictly on procurement strategies. That’s why it has become increasingly important for companies to partner with document management experts like us, who can help capture financial savings and deliver operational efficiencies beyond merely reducing the cost of acquisition and cost per page.

Setting clear goals and defining priorities are key to establishing a comprehensive enterprise strategy.