The cost of document control - Electronic vs. Paper

[Al the Elf]

Folks - the boss this morning set me a tough one and I'm hoping the assembled Cove can help me...

I'm operating an electronic document control system (that satisfies the requirements of ISO9001) for which I've got a clear vision of the specific costs. However I've been challenged about how this matches up to doing it the "old fashioned way" with a paper based system in terms of cost.

I've tried to protest that "it depends" which I know it does, but I'm in a situation where the Top Manager who needs to be convinced is only going to be persuaded by a clarity of financial difference. He's of the type that has zealously avoided having anything to do with controlled documents managed by any mechanism ! To date I've been using a figure of GBP 50 / doc / annum for paper doc control based on a small internal study - what I'd love to have to reinforce this, is a reference to a formal study (published article would be fantastic) that has some kind of statistical result of the cost base for paper doc control.

I'm only trying to consider the admin bit of doc control i.e. after someone has created a final electronic document/file that needs to be controlled. So in my view this means :
- Identification and attachment of attributes (approvers, issue list, etc)
- Creation of appropriate copies
- Issue to copy holders
- Removal of old versions from circulation and archiving
- Managing a doc control procedure
- Document change control recording
- Notification of review
- Recording results of document review
- training of staff in how to work and use the system

Our system is of some size - about 9000 docs currently being managed, but in trying to get some cost data any scale of systems info will do !

Cheers, Alan.

 

[RoxaneB]

While I do not know of a formal study on this topic - but must admit, I, too, would love to see one! - here are some of the activites I've done to show how much things "cost".

• Keep track of your time spent on document control and multiply it by the average hourly rate (including benefits) - your Accounting Department should be able to provide you with that number, or maybe HR.
• Add in software costs. If you're using Word or something else, factor in license fees. If you have a document control software package, add in cost to purchase and contract fees.
• Factor in your time spent training other document authors and approvers.
• Determine the time it takes you to walk to each location of a paper document and time how long it takes you to update a document.
• Determine time saved if you have a document control software package that allows for self-training - as opposed to you or someone else having to organize and conduct formal training.
• An electronic system allows the potential for an electronic training tracker system as well....time and money saved there, as well.

Oh the list goes on and on. I had both systems. When I first got involved with ISO 10 years ago, I had a boss that while we made a great team, he admitted he couldn't even find the on switch to a computer. I was responsible for getting two plants ISO ready and head office. Every time there was a doc change, I had to manually update documents at three locations spread over the Greater Toronto Area....waste of time, but boy did I rack up mileage money! It was a horrible system...but all that my boss would accept.

My second exposure was again, a hard copy system, but we maintained an Access database with rev levels and locations. Just two locations required updates....my location in Mississauga, Ontario and our location in Oriskany, New York (near Utica). I had a counterpart in NY, so I just needed to email him updated copies. Still tedious but not as bad as Job #1.

Now I work for a company that has a document control software package. It's not always the most user-friendly of systems (but it is one that I inherited), but it is much easier to maintain control of 1000 documents and their locations and their updates and their training.

An electronic system may initially cost more upfront, but the benefits to it are far reaching. Time saved....time gained for me to do other things than just babysit an ISO 9000 program. Difficult to put a price tag on that.

 

[mshell]

Keep track of your time spent on document control and multiply it by the average hourly rate (including benefits) - your Accounting Department should be able to provide you with that number, or maybe HR.
Add in software costs. If you're using Word or something else, factor in license fees. If you have a document control software package, add in cost to purchase and contract fees.
Factor in your time spent training other document authors and approvers.
Determine the time it takes you to walk to each location of a paper document and time how long it takes you to update a document.
Determine time saved if you have a document control software package that allows for self-training - as opposed to you or someone else having to organize and conduct formal training.
An electronic system allows the potential for an electronic training tracker system as well....time and money saved there, as well.

Also take into consideration the increased potential for the use of obsolete documents, the time and money it will take to develop the paper document system (materials - paper/binders/folders/ink cartridges and manpower), the fact that the electronic system is already in place, the immediate availability of updated documents vs. the potential delay in updating the hard copies.

These are just a few things that popped into my mind.

IMO: If you have over 9000 documents, it will be a nightmare to manage & maintain a paper system.

 

[Al the Elf]

IMO: If you have over 9000 documents, it will be a nightmare to manage & maintain a paper system.

Gives me a panic attack just to contemplate it.

Thanks for the thoughts so far - broadly it's the things that you have both identified that got me to my GBP 50 figure, but I'm aware that it's a discrete estimate about a discrete set of documentation. I suspect we could all think of a myriad of ways to prove that it costs significantly more or less than any figure we chose to start at.

I guess that really leaves me looking for some kind of study into a distribution of paper document control system costs if I want to do the job 100% justice. I actually suspect I could get away with a reference to any (reputable) published article that shows the costs of paper doc control no matter what the size of the distribution. :

Cheers, Al.

 

[Jconlake]

System Cost

In addition to the cost you are already considering, estimate the cost of getting a major in an audit and recovering from it. Consider the risk/probability of such a major with a manual system versus electronic. There is inherently more risk of a glitch with a manual system. Certainly an auditor will be prone to look harder.

Good luck!

 

[mshell]

I will cross my fingers and hope that your boss comes around.

In the meantime, maybe you should select a section of your system that changes on a regular basis and show your boss how much time and effort it will take to keep a paper system updated.

 

[Al the Elf]

In addition to the cost you are already considering, estimate the cost of getting a major in an audit and recovering from it. Consider the risk/probability of such a major with a manual system versus electronic. There is inherently more risk of a glitch with a manual system. Certainly an auditor will be prone to look harder.

Good luck!

Thanks for the build. I intuitively agree with you, however the thing I'm still lacking is evidence ! I can quote an estimate of a risk that we will get a major finding and indeed note how this is different for paper vs electronic, but I struggle to back it up.

Things like "we got 3 findings a year under the paper system, and we only get one a year now" get locked in endless navel contemplation as to if the 3 vs 1 is actually due to the doc control system or is due to other factors that are equally present in both approaches.

Maybe I should start a survey to get the experiences of the folk here in the Cove...

 

[Al the Elf]

I will cross my fingers and hope that your boss comes around.

In the meantime, maybe you should select a section of your system that changes on a regular basis and show your boss how much time and effort it will take to keep a paper system updated.

I fear that showing him, on an example close enough to him, may be my only way to get him to believe that electronic is the better (and indeed cheaper) option. Bet he won't want to look at any detail !

I have thought of another tack - just saying "trust me - electronic is the best way". What could he do - remove the funding and grind the whole org to a halt; set another manager to rebuild a paper approach and live with the project and change costs to set it up.

It's time I mellowed out... See y'all after the w/e.

Al.

 

[Graeme]

...
I'm only trying to consider the admin bit of doc control i.e. after someone has created a final electronic document/file that needs to be controlled. So in my view this means :
- Identification and attachment of attributes (approvers, issue list, etc)
- Creation of appropriate copies
- Issue to copy holders
- Removal of old versions from circulation and archiving
- Managing a doc control procedure
- Document change control recording
- Notification of review
- Recording results of document review
- training of staff in how to work and use the system

...

Here are some comments on your points, based on my experience in a relatively small organization (maybe 1% of the number of documents you mentioned.) My comments are in blue. Note that I am assuming that with over 9000 documents you are using one of the many commercial document management computer applications ... and that you have a corporate internal network.



- Identification and attachment of attributes (approvers, issue list, etc)

In an electronic system this can be handled by the document management software. It could also be done by programs such as Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat but those are probably too cumbersome for the number of documents you have. Anything that needs to be sent to people can be done via e-mail or instant messaging, usually automatically by the software.

For positive verification of review and approvals, I always suggest producing the document as an Adobe Acrobat PDF file, and using their electronic digital signature feature. This uses the public-key encryption system that ensures that only the owner of the signature could have applied it, and that the document has not been changed since the signature was applied. (Try that with pen and ink!) Provided you have good password control (necessary for any computer system anyway) then it cannot be forged. (Or at least the probability is so low that you're more likely to have a meteor make a direct hit on your file server.)

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- Creation of appropriate copies

The only time a paper copy should be needed is when it absolutely must be at a specific location and there is not access to the corporate network from that location. Otherwise, only one copy is ever needed - the one visible on the network. If every location has access to the network then ZERO additional "copies" are needed.


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- Issue to copy holders

See above - if every location has access to the corporate network then "issuing the document" is handled by giving the user read-only access to the server folder that has the document. If a few paper copies (very few) absolutely must be distributed, then use the existing procedures. The only other suggestion is to put a footer on each "page" of the electronic document stating that the networked copy is the authoritative one and that printed copies are for information only and not to be used on the job.


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- Removal of old versions from circulation and archiving

Trivial - simply replace the document in the "current" folder. As long as the file name remains the same then nothing else needs to be changed. The previous versions are archived by the document coordinator somewhere else on the network. (I simply append the approval date to the file name of archive copies, to ensure that I have unique names.) Only if paper versions are issued (are they really needed?) will keeping your present procedure be needed. Otherwise, placing a revised document on the network instantly "distributes" it to everyone who has access.


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- Managing a doc control procedure

Assuming you are using a commercial software package already, then that takes care of most of this. You need to define who has access to add, modify and delete the electronic copies; everyone else should have read-only access by default. That is part of the server folder properties and is linked to the user properties.


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- Document change control recording

Nothing needs to be changed from your current system. However, you may be able to simplify it.

Consider the fact that an electronic document is a single file. Any change to the document - however trivial - changes the entire file. Therefore change control has to be at the document level instead of the old page level. In addition, the concept of what a "page" is varies with the publishing format. From a single source document (a Microsoft Word file, for instance) the document can be published on paper, as an Adobe Acrobat PDF file, as an HTML file, as a Microsoft Help file, as an SGML file or a PostScript file for pre-press work, or in a number of other formats. The concept of a "page" is really only valid for printing on paper, and in an electronic system you do that as little as possible. Therefore, revision procedures that deal with changing, removing or replacing "pages" are no longer needed. The document control system is dealing with the entire document, and the concept of a page is merely an artifact of a few of the many possible publishing formats.

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- Notification of review

As noted earlier, this can be handled by the document management software or your document editing software. Anything that needs to be sent to people can be done via e-mail or instant messaging.


​

- Recording results of document review

Same as above.


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- training of staff in how to work and use the system

What I have done in my tiny system - and what many commercial applications do - is simply make a web page on the internal network. That has links to the documents, and also the documents can have internal links to other documents. Many people already know how to use a web page, and training the others is easy. Auditors seem to like it as well. Also, the web page itself is your master document list!

As for training people on the contents of new or revised documents, I know several document management applications will handle the control of that as well.

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[Greg B]

G'Day Alf,
I agree with everything that Roxane, Michele and Graeme have said. We even went as far as using the cost of printing and added up every sheet of paper over a three month period.
Anyway...we finally adopted an electronic system a few years ago and it has been working well. It used to take anything up to eight hours to approve, print, sign and issue a new document (especially if you had to issue 22 copies of a full review of the Quality manual). Now it may take about an hour...BIG savings. So much so that I lost my secretary early this year.

BUT...management has now asked (two days ago) that they all get a FULL set of Procedures and the QM each in hardcopy. It seems that if they are on the intranet the poor people seem to forget about them. So I will have a dual system and you can bet that they will cost me at audit time because they will forget to put the change in etc. They will probably change their collective little minds again next quarter.

By the way, why does your boss now want you to calculate these figures? It is usually done before you buy an electronic system.


GregB