On the World Environment Day, document software companies offer divers solutions to businesses managers for saving costs and making their IT environments more efficient.

Green IT is no longer just a fashionable subject for debate among Organization and Systems managers. In times when companies of all sizes are forced to do the same or even more with less, establishing environmental policies (Green IT) actually allow companies to increase their efficiency, reduce costs and improve their corporate image.

"Today, the consequences of climate changes are very noticeable to everybody. Citizens must adopt sustainable consumption practices, but perhaps businesses have much more social responsibility. Thanks to technology, reducing power consumption and CO2 emissions can be in reach of any organization. Achieving these goals can be as simple as acquiring a document software solution," said

Julio Olivares, president and founder of DocPath.

According to IDC, International Data Corporation, European businesses spend an average of 300 Euros a year per employee on printing and digitalization services. This figure may even increase to 740 Euros in certain sectors.

This economic data also impacts the environment. Only in Spain paper consumption per capita per year is 176 Kg., which, compared to other European countries is 21 percent higher than the average of the European Union where it doesn't exceed 139 kg. per capita. There is clearly room for lots of improvement in Spain, but also in Europe and worldwide.

It is really just a matter of looking at the company's business processes and managers will find quickly areas where implementing a "Greener IT" could be achieved with some simple improvements. In lots of companies the following easy to follow advice and tips may help managers in pinpointing actionable tasks to make businesses more environmentally friendly and, at the same time, significantly reduce their operating costs:

• Employ multifunction machines that can print, fax, copy, scan and send and receive electronic documents by email. As well as reducing energy consumption, this will provide savings on capital costs by eliminating some unnecessary infrastructure.

• Use software to electronically process documents and thereby increase productivity and generate savings from the costs of printing and paper storage.

• Whenever possible, print in black and white, print on both sides of the paper and only use colour printers when business considerations demand it. One should not forget that colour printers consume more energy than black and white printers and that the ink for colour printers is much more expensive.

• But most importantly, help you employees in the "change of mentality" process; this is the very first step for beginning implementing a paperless office environment, or at least try getting as close to it as possible. How often do employees print out pages and pages of documents or manuals, just because they are "used to it". But you need to also encourage your staff by offering some kind of compensation. It is well known that incentive programs have successfully helped reducing paper and printer resources consumption year after year. One idea might be to award departments that reduce their paper consumption. Then employees would think twice before pressing the print button.

• Implementing Print Control Software: But this can be even further improved. Another possibility would be to give a special price to the employees that stand out in their efforts of saving paper. In order to be able to measure how much printing resources and paper each employee or department is consuming, companies need some reliable system that tracks the different kind of resource usages. Installing a document print control system will make monitoring and managing more efficiently all the work and documents that are being printed. With these types of applications, individual user and department level print quotas can be established, and customized reports can be generated to provide detailed analyses of the overall operation of the printing system. Thinking of this option a little more, you may come to the conclusion that employees probably will waste less paper, simply because they know that their activity is being monitored.

As we have seen, Implementing Green IT can be quite easily achieved, but is not only a matter of choosing the right hardware, or software products that enable closer control over the printing resources used, but need to go hand in hand with engaging our employees to participate actively in the process.