If you think about the number of children in the world, it’s obvious that Santa has the largest manufacturing and distribution facility on the planet. Can you imagine what it takes to run a facility this large?
Just think of the number of Elves Santa has to employ. And as you know, Elves don’t come cheap. They need health care, dental care, vacation time, 401k for when they retire, etc… The list of 
benefits goes on an on. And with all these benefits, the paperwork is immense.
Just hiring new Elves is a production in itself. Resumes have to be gathered and routed to the hiring Elves, interviews have to be set up and then a decision on which Elves to hire has to be made. Not all Elves are cut out to be Santa’s helpers. Some are better suited to making cookies. However, once the hiring process is complete and the new Elves are onboard, there is the entire process of “on boarding” where they fill out paperwork, are assigned to a toy department, receive their @northpole.com e-mail address, as well as log-in information for all the various internal systems. Again, this generates a lot of paperwork.
With an online document management system, the paperwork can be routed throughout the kingdom. Why do you think most Elves are happy? It’s because at the North Pole, everything runs smoothly. You never hear Elves complaining about lost paperwork or delays due to misfiling of documents, do you?
However, there is a little sadness at the North Pole. What most of us forget are the poor Elves who do not get to work making toys. All the administration Elves who ensure that Santa’s toyshop runs smoothly are never thought of. First off, there are the accounting Elves; Think about the amount of raw materials that are needed to build all those toys. They have to make sure that the bills are paid on time and that they don’t pay for materials not yet received. The volume of paperwork associated with purchasing and accounts payable is huge. Luckily, their online document management system ensures that they stay on top of the flow of materials and bills. Because much of what they have to do is automated, they need less Elves in accounting which frees up Elves for toy making. Still, they have a large Elfin accounting department.
Then of course, there are all the Elves working in the warehouse. Shipping and receiving materials and toys requires a lot reindeer power and a lot of paperwork. Just organizing the picking and packing sheets for outgoing toys to be shipped in the correct red bag is a big job. Can you imagine if they got it wrong? What would Santa do if he had the wrong bag filled with the wrong toys for a given neighborhood? Elves can’t make these types of mistakes because of the dire consequences for small children. This is where their document management system comes in. They can route documents and have supervisor Elves checking the list twice. I know you thought it was just Santa checking twice, but that was a different list.
While we can’t list all the Elves, an operation of this size has maintenance Elves that keep all areas in tip-top shape, real estate Elves who look for new locations at the North Pole for expansion, research and development Elves for new toy design and food service Elves who feed the rest of the Elves. Seriously, we take all these poor Elves for granted. But with document management, at least what they do does not have to be bogged down in paperwork.
Then again, maybe Santa doesn’t use an online document management system. Maybe he just uses magic.
