With the number of properties owned or managed by housing providers in the UK now exceeding two million, it isn’t hard to visualise the millions of paper documents being produced and stored by these associations on a daily basis.
In many cases a document may be read only once, filed away and forgotten about and as time passes, a substantial amount of costly office space will get used up as these paper files are stored in on-site filing cabinets or in off-site storage facilities.
To put these costs into perspective, 1,000 tenant and property files on average will take up 125 sq-ft of office space, equating to over £18,000 in rented floor space annually. The average cost of filling a four-drawer filing cabinet is around £16,000 and then another £1,440 per year to maintain it. In addition, 800 staff hours are wasted each year just managing the paper files of 1,000 tenants, which costs associations around £8,000 per year.
As for mailroom processing costs, a single post item can cost between £5 and £25 to process from end-to-end and delay a simple process by up to 60 hours. A typical housing provider with 5,000 properties can expect to spend over 4,000 hours and £60,000 annually before the post is even opened!
With such significant costs, it is hard to ignore the inefficiencies of paper in a modern housing association.
The problems with paper
As well as taking up valuable space, keeping paper documents on site can also lead to other problems such as duplication of information across multiple locations, the need to transfer hundreds of boxes of files during an office move, and having to access documents from several remote sites, rather than centrally.
Also, without sufficient disaster recovery plans in place, storing the majority of information in paper format could cause serious damage to the running of an association and to the relationship with their tenants and customers should a disaster occur.
Moving forward
In today’s marketplace, everything is needed yesterday and official documentation needs to be instantly accessible to ensure housing providers remain compliant and prepared for auditing at all times. So the need for more streamlined and instantly obtainable information is now more crucial than ever.
One of the key issues within the housing sector at the moment is the need to address the large volumes of documents and records being generated on a daily basis, as well as the need to share this documentation easily and quickly, especially when it relates directly to tenants.
Of course for many housing providers, a large proportion of their information is now stored electronically, but many documents are still ending up in filing cabinets, which isn’t ideal when you are working in a faster and more demanding market.
Going forward, the housing sector can easily achieve improved management of their documentation by looking at rationalising their business processes, improving their tenant experiences and delivering real value.
For example, automating business critical information, forms and document-driven processes is fundamental to an association’s ability to maximise employee productivity and reduce costs, while accelerating the flow of information into business applications and thus improving customer service.
Business process outsourcing enables high efficiency gains, significant cost savings and a much smarter and faster way of working.
By enhancing and developing a sustainable range of process improvements, housing providers can then concentrate on core business functions and improve customer service. There is also the added bonus of achieving more environmentally-sustainable business practices including reducing or eradicating paper usage altogether.
Joseph Pettit is associate director of business development for Optical Record Systems.
