When Will Our Offices Finally Turn Paperless?
2016-06-06
Systems for document digitalization and management belong to the top five enterprise applications. Most firms consider them as extremely useful and more than a quarter of them plan to invest in these applications within the next three to five years.
Survey by international agency GfK with the business magazine Trend and the IT association using a sample of 146 respondents’ shows that 60 percent of firms use a system for document digitalization and management. Out of those, 79% consider these solutions useful and 28 % of respondents stated that in next 5 years they are considering investing in this area. The sample consisted primarily of IT managers and IT specialists but also top management of medium (50 to250 employees) and large (250 and over) firms.
Although an increased number of firms take advantage of document management systems, most of us communicate by email or various chats and digitalization is frequently in the news, the volume of printed paper in the world is not regressing. Quite the contrary, growing relatively significantly. Since the 1980s the usage of paper in the world doubled.
The idea of a paperless office is not ten or twenty years old – the concept appeared 40years ago. In spite of this a typical office worker uses, according to the Paperless Project, 10 thousand sheets of paper annually. Almost half of those printed documents end up in waste basket the same day. Paper manufacturing use over 40 % of wood harvested for industrial use.
The above mentioned result is harmful not only for the environment but also inefficient for companies and risky from the storage standpoint. An office employee spends 30 to 40 percent of working hours searching emails and printed documents. Majority (70%) of firms would end their existence in case of a catastrophic fire or flood within three weeks.
Why, instead of these facts many people at the firms insist on paper as opposed to a digital format? With some it is the matter of habit – paper is simply around for so long, we can touch it and can annotate it. Although research suggests that from a display people read faster and with less effort, in a survey most claim preference to paper. Deeply ingrained habits are hard to change and losing stereotypes takes time.
There are other similar supposed barriers to conversion to digital. Frequently the argument is the need to sign and archive documents. However, nowadays it is easy to sign documents digitally on the tablet screen with the capability of capturing signatures with a stylus and with a combination with software combine the signature (including biometric features) with a document such as a business agreement. The process is similar to face to face signing we are traditionally used to. Everything is visible on the display and everything can be checked. The single difference is that signature is not done on paper but directly to the tablet’s display.
Digital signature opens new avenues towards better ways of servicing clients as well as faster and more efficient corporate processes. Additional benefits are savings on printing, distribution or archiving documents and significantly higher security as software such as Signatus enables storing signed documents into the tablet as well as synchronize them with a remote server.
Because of visible advantages of digital processing of documents in paperless processes and a continuous change in “ironclad” habits isn’t it time for paper to go to a well-deserved retirement at the firms?
LEARN MORE ABOUT SIGNATUS:
3 Ways to Archive Digitally Signed Electronic Documents
E-Signature Need-to-Knows for Global Business
E-signature is no longer only for Big Boys
