The Paperless Office: Can it be Done?

 

Consider this: As of this writing in 2011, almost everything we generate comes from a digital system, eg. word processing, accounting systems, digital copiers, email, etc. Nearly all of those documents are already stored digitally on the system that created them. You are most of the way there!

We live in exciting times

We have just quietly passed a milestone in the last few years that allows us to say "Yes, it can be done. We can go nearly paperless!" I say nearly, because, inevitably, someone is going to hand you paper with information on it. But back to the exciting times. Think about it.

For the first time in the history of man

there is now available to us truly mass storage, (terabytes!) for a very low cost. Do you remember when a 10 megabyte hard drive was as big as a brick and twice as heavy. We thought 'Wow, I'll never run out of space now!' My PC used to shake violently (spinning up the hard drive) when I saved a file.

You add to that widely available, inexpensive broadband

that provides for the transfer and storage of large files. I may be dating myself, but I remember my first modem. It was 14.4 kb. It made a screaming sound that woke up the whole house if I was working in my office late at night! But seriously, folks, we now have available to us very, very fast speeds by standards just a few years ago. It's not uncommon for businesses and households to have 3 gigabit throughput. If needed, you can stream movies to your home. That's data transfer!

There's just one thing missing.

Back to that 'paper' problem. You still have tons of paper around you. You look around your office and see reams of various paper documents. You think, there must be a solution to this. There is. Enter the new generations of high speed, light weight desktop scanners. Throw 20 documents into a high speed, duplex scanner and watch in amazement. These little gems have a footprint about the size of a tissue box, and are incredible work horses. The stars have aligned. That's what I'm talking about! Sweet.

Time to admit it. I wasn't totally truthful with you.

There's actually one more thing needed. If it was that simple, why isn't everyone paperless now? Well, you need a strategy. There are some REALLY important considerations when you talk about 'Electronic Document Storage'. Let's talk about some of them. If you did actually have all of your documents stored electronically, what would you do with them? You could store them on your hard drive at home or work, but you miss one of the greatest features of Electron Document Storage. You now essentially have a backup of everything! Why not store it off site, where it's secure from fire, flood, and disaster? Oh, but security is paramount. You don't want your documents available to anyone but authorized viewers, so you'll need a secure place to store them. How should you organize them? Just dump thousands of documents on top of each other in some repository? You need to think all of these things through.

The average PC user doesn't usually have the technical knowledge and falls down hard, right here.

Fortunately for you, there are companies that have thought all of this through, and have created truly affordable systems, available to you as Software As A Service. To find out more, check out www.scan123.com. Yes, you can have a paperless office (nearly). Be encouraged. It is now affordably within your reach!