Achieving A Paperless Office
We all love the environment, but what steps are really needed to become completely paperless?
In 1978, Professor F W Lancaster published a landmark paper entitled Toward Paperless Information Systems. He accurately predicted that there would be an electronic information system acting as a “library in a desk” by the year 2000. He concluded that the composition of documents through an online system meant “the paperless society is rapidly approaching”.
Paper Persistence
If you look up from your screen and survey your desk, it’s clear that Professor Lancaster’s vision hasn’t yet materialized. Considering the opportunities provided by internet connectivity, we are still surprisingly reliant on pulped trees for much of our communications. So how can we achieve the reality of a paperless office that was breathlessly promised to us decades ago?
Steps Towards the Paperless Utopia:
Cloud
The first step involves the cloud, since offline data siloes are completely incompatible with a paperless office. Whether you’re a fan of Google Docs or a Microsoft Office loyalist, there are cloud-hosted applications for every work-related function or activity. Companies like Adobe are actively pushing consumers towards cloud-hosted solutions rather than hard-drive installs. A document created and hosted in the cloud can be viewed by anyone, so there’s no need to print it out. Packages like Basecamp and Slack specialize in gathering related project files into one place, with access from almost any device.
Finance
Finance is the second area that has been revolutionized by the internet, with biometric scans and 2FA permitting safe online transactions. Bank statements and invoices can be abolished through internet banking, with BACS payments and automated acknowledgements reducing volumes of financial paperwork.
Few businesses accept checks nowadays, whereas mobile payment platforms like Square and iZettle are growing in popularity. Online statements from service providers are also recommended, while faxes can be emailed as PDFs or scanned using anything from a 3-in-1 printer to a smartphone app. And speaking of hardware, giving employees two monitors enables them to cross-refer documents without hard copies.
Team Effort
Meetings used to begin with stapled agendas and end with typed copies of minutes being distributed, but these files can now be displayed digitally with packages like TeamViewer. Virtual meetings simplify things further, with PowerPoint presentations and PDFs uploaded to Basecamp afterwards or emailed to each delegate.
Indeed, email is a vital tool in any war against paper. Quicker than the postal service yet more tangible than a phone call, people at adjacent desks think nothing of emailing each other in the same way their children will happily Snapchat each other across the dinner table. Stylus pens or freehand drawing tools enable signatures to be added, which carry the same legal weight as hand-signed documents.
Large File Transfers
Of course, email isn’t ideal for distributing larger documents. Some email servers automatically reject attachments over a certain size, which is where platforms like Dropbox and WeTransfer come in. These are ideal for hosting and transferring large files, such as electronic scans of archived paperwork.
Data archiving is growing in popularity, creating permanent digital backups of yellowing documents that would otherwise take up loads of space. Indexing enables keyword or date-specific searches that would take far longer with physical files, and professional archiving companies will even securely destroy scanned paper files – bringing companies one step closer to the dream of a fully paperless office. The only issue is the reluctance of some to abandon paper records. In which camp do you belong?