The Concept of the Paperless Office

In the article A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Paperless Office - Industry Trend or Event OfficeSolutions by Carrie Rivera posted on October 2000, the author said that combining small desktop scanners with high speed network scanners, your office has the potential to become paperless, allowing you to pull documents up at the snap of your fingers as well as electronically archive records.

An article in http://www.offshore-manual.com entitled Paperless Office caught my attention. It writes, “Now, however, we firmly believe we have reached a point where the "virtually" paperless office can become reality, even for those who don't believe they have computer skills. Having put these techniques into action myself we have experienced a new-found freedom.”

When we think of Paperless office, we envision an efficient way of conducting business - something that is not compromising on the quality and saves time and effort on our part. Another thing is that all office documents are just at your fingertips. You can carry with you loads of work and documents. Once you have a true paperless office, you can put everything in your briefcase and take it anywhere in the globe. It can also save you a fortune. You can cut back on stationery, ink and mind you - taxes! With it you can have a completely tax-free environment without prejudice of course if the law making body enacts taxation laws with regards to the matter.

Another crucial point that people brainstorm about is security. Business documents are the lifeline of every business. It has to be secured and guarded. Analyzing the security threats, two risks must be prevented. First - the risk that somebody might stole it, and second - the risk of you losing the data.

The first risk can be solved by the use of a special software. You should take an expert for this because this really matters. The second risk can also be prevented by backing up. Tedious as it may seem but it’s a must to do it.

In the article The paperless office - Myth or Reality? Posted on Nov. 19, 2001, it says: “Experts have been predicting over the last thirty years the concept of the paperless office. Yet research from a newly published book, The Myth of the Paperless Office, by Richard Harper, University of Surrey and Abigail Sellen indicates that the use of paper has increased and that this increase is due to the introduction of new digital technology.”

As for me, we cannot 100% get rid of paper. We are still a paper-based society. The transition will happen gradually and we are in the point of sustaining the transition… While we are in this stage, we must get the best use of both paper and digital media.