Stories by Kym Gilhooley

Documents get smart

Despite paper's image as an outmoded and costly conveyor of information, businesses still love to push it. It's tactile, familiar and, in many cases, represents the primary way that companies interact with employees, partners and customers. Yet the difficulties inherent in tracking, storing and rekeying data and moving paper around take a huge financial toll on businesses. Even those documents that have been converted to an electronic format tend to be largely static. What might it mean to business efficiencies if corporate documents could become active in the processes they front and adapt as needed? What if they could become, well, smart?