The Computer has the Paperwork, No, Really.

I sent a package to Canada this week. Sending this package took several tries because of paper work the package needed. While it took four tries to send this package was remained how far the computer has come and how small thinks humans still are in the age of ubiquitous computers. Paperwork still trumps computers in far too many places.

My trouble was sending a box of shoes to Canada from the USA via Fedex. Simple to do. Go to Fedex site, enter information about billing and address, print label, attach label to box and then drop off at the pickup location. Being in a rural area that is 30 miles from a FedEx Kinko's we just drop off at the local packaging store.

The trouble began when the the driver felt the package needed five copies of a commercial invoice form. Hmmm, the FedEx site made not mention of needing to do this in the label work flow. So home I went to do such. I went back to the label, explored the label work flow, followed along as best I could, and the site told me that "No, this destination and contents do not require extra paper forms". Okay, good, but I create a form to print anyway. Back to drop off site only to be sent home for more forms.

So back home, make more forms which I feel are not necessary to ship some shoes to Canada to placate the driver. Forms that I am pretty sure now that no one will ever see.

Why do I believe the forms will never be seen? 'Cause no one in Canada is really going to take the time to look at them. Why? Cause Canada is just going to Scan the Barcodes on the label then look at the form on a computer display and go, "Okay, weight and size and forms are all good" and off my package goes to Quebec.

What, what about the papers I printed out for a human to look at and file and store for years? Well, I am pretty sure neither FedEx nor Canada wants to pay to file paper work, store paper worked, preserve paper work, move paper work and then destroy paperwork and fill holes in Canada with boxes of shredded paper work. That is why Canada and FedEx bought Computers.

They bought themselves computers to eliminate paperwork not generate more paperwork.

In my second commercial software gig I worked at Reynolds & Reynolds which is a company that produces paper forms for Automobile Dealerships. Yep, they are in the business of making paperwork. My job was to create a work flow for a product. The system would have a user input data and then have the user print out the data to be then reentered by another person as data from the printout. This step was done about six times. Type in stuff, print out stuff, hand stuff to another person who then typed in the printout to print it out for another person to type back in.

After doing this cycle filled with data entry errors three times I had had enough. I raised my hand and suggested that since we had computers and were programmers perhaps we could automate the process to eliminate the printing and data entry errors. The response was that I was interfering with the process and a heretic for saying change was good. After defending my position my boss's boss took my challenge, handed me a copy of Turbo C 1.0 and said you got three weeks or your out. Oh and I had to still do my regular job.

Well, after three weeks I did my showcase with my friend and assistant Brent. We showcased our findings, design and plan to reduce 40 man hours of work down to about three minutes. My boss was not happy saying the plan was unworkable, stupid and would never work. She was not happy when we should here all of the next six months work had been completed by the new program the day before with plans to convert more of the workflow to a computer program soon. It was then I learned to be a bit more skilled at setting expectations.

But now 25 years later people are still using computers to print out forms to give to others input into more computers. Beyond frustrating me it costs money ( imagine if Amazon could eliminate the cost of labels and boxes) Paper is bad and some of us just don't get that.

In conclusion I fully realize that FedEx has removed the unnecessary paperwork by improving its processes using barcodes and putting computers at the boundaries and gateways. I am also pretty sure they do not want to would love to run their company with no physical paperwork to store, to file, to secure, to shred and then dispose of in a hole in Canada.