Only few years ago an answer on this question would easily be ‘no’. However, today we would argue that going paperless is the only way forward. Firstly, what are the benefits of a paperless office?
- Cost savings
- Information security
- Environmental benefits
- Business simplification
Cost Savings
Having paper in your office will result in several cost implications: printers, printing materials, paper, shredders, waste paper removal costs and paper storage expenses. These are often ignored in P&L of a business, however a review of office costs will uncover that these costs can pile up without being easily noticed.
Information Security
While attention is often paid to the information loss over the net, most risk actually comes from sensitive information being kept in paper form on your desk, in storage cabinets or in the recycling bins. Removing paper simply takes this risk factor out completely.
Environment
Despite popular belief, one ream of A4 paper doesn’t mean loss of a 100 year old tree. However, one tree might produce about 100 reams of paper, and more if the recycled paper is used. Manufacturing process and transport of paper, printing equipment and material result in significant carbon footprint. When you add that there are thousands of offices using paper around the world, environmental impact is huge.
Business Simplification
With handy data flow systems and PC casino great britain technology, not using paper can make work simpler. For example, not having too scan paper copies, then recycle/remove paper will save time and make office more productive. There are also techniques available (see below) to make paperless office more productive than any paper-relying office around. So how to make paperless office a reality? There are several techniques that enable businesses to run paperless offices.
- Using twin monitors on PC/Mac. Rather than printing every document received, twin 24” or 27” monitors can enable multiple A4 pages to be displayed at any time.
- Relying on PDF and Word forms to prefill documents. There are many ways of creating editable Word and PDF documents that replace the printing requirements.
- Utilising electronic signature. Most often we print something just to sign it, scan it and email it to a third party. All of this can be prevented by placing a scanned electronic signature instead.
- Using cloud storage rather than physical cabinets to store documents. Cloud storage is readily available, and systems such as Box are safe and well protected.
- Utilising whiteboards, monitors and charts to record business performance and share information visually. Printing business status reports is not only costly but it is laborious and ineffective.
- Marking up PDF documents using specialised software. Companies such as Adobe and Bluebeam specialise in these systems and some of these are quite inexpensive.
- Using iPhone to photograph a document rather than scan.
- Using iPad to take notes when with a client rather than printed forms. Some iPad apps will sync these notes immediately and store them in the cloud.
These are some of the available tools to make a paperless office a reality. For sure, some industries have a legal obligation to keep a paper copy for a number of years for Audit purpose. For now, an off-site storage might be a good option, however in not so distant future; the hard copy storage requirement will documents will surely be obsolete as well.