Roberta Gelb has seen many things in her position as President of Chelsea Office Systems, which she has run since its inception in 1984. She began the panel “Why Does it Cost $800,000 to Produce a Document?” at the Chief Information & Technology Officers Forum with a story.
While working with a firm to improve document automation, Gelb encountered a secretary who refused to implement a new fix. Every time the secretary needed to fill out a purchase form, for example, she would find and fill out an old document. Gelb timed her process: 65 minutes. With automation, the process should have taken five.
Knowing that such a situation is not atypical, Gelb did the math. That kind of inefficiency, multiplied across a midsize law firm’s twenty secretaries, and calculating in the loss of time for the firm’s associates, who would presumably be affected by it, Gelb calculated a potential loss of almost $800,000 per year. The year was 2007.
