If you’re old enough to remember the ‘90s, for the kids that’s when Netscape and dial-up modems ruled, then you will remember one of the great catchphrases of the day – the “Paperless Office”. But as usually happens with fads, the reality often falls short of the promise. Think about your own work, in many ways you might be just as dependent on paper as ever before.
While the paper and printer companies thank you for your addiction, times are starting to change. How might you ask? For starters were have reached a point of near-ubiquitous wireless internet – this means that most people have the sum of human knowledge and experience at 24 hours a day. That’s right, no more waiting for the library to open or having to learn the Dewey Decimal System (how’s that for a throwback?) and scrolling through volumes of microfilm.
But beyond this what else has changed? Computers are more powerful than ever, and most can fit in the palm of our hand. All of this points to why the promise of the paperless office is finally here.
No More Excuses
Now you might think that some industries are stuck in the paper age, but that is not exactly the case. In fact, even those who must meet the toughest HIPAA requirements or other information security requirements now have no more excuses for not going paperless.
The reality is that many of their competitors already doing it and this means that laggards are often at a disadvantage. This can lead to lost customers and lost money and eventually could see those who are stuck in the old ways of doing things eventually losing their businesses.
Other benefits of going paperless are not only greener offices, which is great for the planet, but there is also reduction in space needed and this can result to hundreds of thousands, if not millions in savings, as companies reduce the size of their offices and their document storage facilities.
As you can see the time to go paperless is now, even for those in highly-regulated industries such as healthcare. Now the trick is to do it in the right way in a way which helps to improve productivity and help the business grow. Don’t think you will become overwhelmed by spreadsheet either as our research found several companies such as the Reed Group have developed solutions that make the promise of going paperless better than ever before.
How to Go Paperless
Going paperless doesn’t mean waking up one morning and banning all paper in your office. The reality is that it requires planning and a thorough understanding of your own business processes as well as those of your customers and your suppliers.
This starts by walking through your systems and identifying the key pieces of information for each process and then how that information is currently entered into the system. Following this approach will save you time and money but it requires a shift in mindset – one which is less focused on the paper but rather the business processes which that sheet of paper helps to support.
From there, the next step is to begin the process of digitizing the volumes of paper that every business has in its file cabinets. Let’s face it, this information is a sort of archaeological history of your company and as such, it needs to be curated for the sake of posterity.
But scanning documents doesn’t quite do the trick. These documents need to come to life in the digital world and this only happens when meta tags and OCR are applied to scanned documents. This turns the digital document into something which is structured by allowing for indexing and data analysis via your database systems. Only in this way can once paper documents add value to the digital world.
However, you’re not done yet as scanning and converting paper documents only helps to capture the history. What about new documents, new customer, new transactions? These need a path to be digital from day one and this means looking at the processes by which data is generated in your organization. This covers everything from on boarding customers and employees to look at how purchase orders are received, and invoices are generated.
As you can see going paperless isn’t magic it is a lot of hard work. But the difference from the grandiose promises of the paperless office to today is that the technology is here, it is readily available, it is affordable, and it works.
Going paperless might have been forgotten but the reality is that the paperless office is already here, now the only question is whether you are ready to transform your organization to meet the promise.
