Office solutions provider Xerox recommends that companies should introduce a new role of “director of documents” to streamline control of business documents, ensure compliance with regulations and cut costs.

Xerox cited studies suggesting that 90 percent of European companies do not know how much they spend to produce and manage documents each year.

Meanwhile, the legal burdens placed on firms by the Freedom of Information Act, the Data Protection Act and various governance rules, coupled with the cost of the ever-growing paper mountain, mean there can be big benefits if companies improve document management. Such pressures have already increased demand for enterprise content management (ECM) and data lifecycle management software developed by firms such as EMC, FileNet and Open Text.

Currently, however, document management often falls between the domains of IT, facilities management or other departments.

"There are very few people with direct responsibility for documents within an organisation," said John Hopwood, general manager of Xerox Global Services UK. "Companies spend 15 to 25 percent of revenues on document management but over 90 percent don't have a clue about their total document spending. There needs to be a document processing organisation that sits between IT and business processes. There could be specialist role reporting into these and perhaps working with the leader of quality management."

The need for better document management has already been recognised in the US, where the government has held conferences for a new category of “chief knowledge officers” in the public and private sectors.

Not everyone, however, believes the solution is as simple as creating a new role.

Chas Moloney, associate director of marketing at Ricoh UK, said, "If companies are to be successful [at improving document management], it needs to be the responsibility of all senior managers and the board."

Separately, ECM firm Stellent has announced its acquisition of digital rights management firm SealedMedia and document cleansing firm Bitform.