Paperless Offices - The Real Story

There has been a resurgence of buzz around the paperless office lately, mostly focused around the question myth vs. reality. It’s refreshing to read the articles that are written about the topic, such as this story from Practical Accountant. Each of them profiles customers that have taken steps to convert paper to electronic images in order to remove paper from slowing critical business operations. And each of the customers is equally enthusiastic about the results that they have achieved, both through cost savings and a more effective workforce.

So does this recent buzz mean that the paperless office is becoming a reality? Not really. Companies today receive too many paper documents from internal processes and external parties to ever reach paperless nirvana. But there is a big opportunity to focus on going “paperless” as a way to improve the process – rather than an end-game. Business processes like accounting and procurement have greatly benefited by moving online. It is only natural companies should work to pull the paper-based information associated with these applications into electronic workflows.

In our conversations with our customers, we’ve found that the one of the biggest challenges to eliminating paper from business processes is the behavioral switch. Workers are comfortable with paper and don’t necessarily like to lose “control” of their paper documents in order to send them somewhere to be scanned. A good place to start is to empower all office workers to capture paper-based information at the point in the business that is most convenient and efficient. One way to do this is to use a publicly available, familiar device, such as the office MFP, for scanning. By using document imaging software for MFPs, the people closest to work processes can add paper-based information to workflows, making the transition less of a disruption to the worker.

So while the paperless office itself is still a myth, removing paper from processes to create a seamless digital workflow is definitely a reality. For an example of one company that did it, click here. Do you have a "paperless" story to share? Send us a comment, we'd love to hear from you.

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