How long have you been hearing about “going paperless”? Probably forever just like I have, but is anyone being successful at it was my question. I mean, the mailman brings a handful of paper again every day; there is probably a printer, copier and fax machine in your office. They all create printed documents that get piled on a desk, mailed, filed or thrown away.



I met up with a company out of New York, Digital Storage Inc., and they began to educate me on what the term “going paperless” really means for a business of any size. It boils down to a reduction in paper and the conversion of archives to what is known as a digital format.

Paperless looks to refer more to removing all of a company's old archive documents that are kept in storage for years on end and at risk of loss if a fire or water damage ever happened. I can't even imagine having to attempt to find a specific piece of paper in a warehouse full of boxes loaded with papers. Once a company has converted all of these archived documents in to a digital format (like say a pdf file) then all of that information is available through an internal search engine. Instead of spending hours, if not days, searching through boxes of old, dusty boxes you would type in some specific information about the document you are looking for and boom … up comes all of the matching documents.

Select the one you need and e-mail it, that is the start of a paperless office; because not only have you removed thousands of pieces of old paper, but now you can easily move that document throughout the office without ever having to print it.

In researching this concept of paperless offices I found a couple of specific areas that this concept excels passed just the removal of paper; it adds a tremendous layer of security and safety to the documents. Now all of the documents can be backed up, fire is no longer the catastrophe it once was. Yeah, you still have to replace the office, but not the office can be set back up quickly and have all the working and archived documents it had before the fire.

And security? With systems that allow for password protection and encryption documents can be protected making the document management side of document conversion a perfect solution for accounting departments, human resource departments and legal departments. These three areas is the bulk of most paper documents in a business.

The key to continued success really is in the system put in place. To start this process you may want to hire out the initial scanning project to get you up and running quickly, but you won't want to get yourself back in to the spot of having thousands of documents to scan. The representatives at Digital Storage told me they train the users on how to maintain a successful, ongoing system to keep the piles of paper at bay. Then once a company is on track, it is smooth sailing.

So now we know what to expect when you migrate your office to “paperless” … it's more than just saving trees.