Is the “paperless office” still in our future?
More than 30 years ago, an article in Business Week magazine predicted the office of the future would be “paperless.” It quoted a noted business machine company executive who predicted “a TV display terminal with keyboard” on office desks, the ability to “call up documents from my files on the screen,” and receiving mail or messages at the press of a button.

The article envisioned that these activities, and most office record-handling, would be electronic, without paper to back it up. And while the electronic method of doing business predicted in the article has become a reality, so far the paperless office has failed to materialize.

Most office workers today are still inundated by paper records. In answer to a customer enquiry, you send an e-mail and then print out a copy of it to place in a customer’s file. You just know you will want to refer to a certain article in the future, so you print it out and file it away in the appropriate category. You want to be sure you have all the proper records on file for customer approval, legal and tax purposes, so you continue to fill filing cabinets with paper documents.

Admittedly, people have a certain comfort level with paper documents. Even Bill Gates, chairman and CEO of Microsoft, has been quoted as saying he prefers working with paper for extensive reading. “…When it comes to something over about four or five pages,” Gates said, “I print it out and I like to have it to carry around with me and annotate.” Gates added that technology would have to improve before “all the things we work with on paper today move into digital form.”

Until about 2000, the amount of paper used in offices continued to rise every year, with paper sales increasing 6 to 7 percent annually. The convenience and cost-effectiveness of desktop printing almost encouraged office workers to print at will. In the last five years, however, the demand for paper has slowed to a rate of about 4 percent a year, indicating a gradual acceptance of the electronic office environment. And why?

One reason might be that for the first time, according to a 2005 article in the Christian Science Monitor, 47 percent of the workforce had entered the job market after computers had already been introduced to the office environment. A paper consulting firm executive noted in the same article: “More information is being transmitted electronically and more people are comfortable with the information residing only in electronic form without printing multiple backups.”

So is there still a chance that offices will go paperless?

Certainly the technology is available to make that happen – multifunctional printers, electronic document management programs, scanners that convert paper documents into digital files and seamlessly route them to the proper electronic folders – all these can help you significantly reduce the amount of paper your office creates. This, in turn, saves the expense of printing copies (paper, toner, machine upkeep, etc.), the space that storing them takes up, and the time consumed in retrieving them when needed.

Maybe “paperless” is too much to expect of most offices, but if less paper is your goal, you should start by establishing company procedures on archiving, managing and recovery of information. If actually converting your office’s existing paper files to digital format seems like a daunting task, your HPS document imaging consultant can help.

He or she is knowledgeable about the available hardware and software, and moreover, can provide you with a complete analysis of your company’s document needs and help you develop a customized strategy for converting at least some of your paper files to electronic ones. HPS Office Systems offers many products to help make this happen, including DocuLex, GlobalScan™ and DocumentMall.™