A paperless society? Not so fast
In the heady early days of the computer era, futurists imagined the coming of the paperless society. So far, ordinary people have proven them wrong.
Paper use in the United States has steadily risen, with office workers hitting the print command to produce reams of e-mails, reports and other documents. Many of those documents end up in desk drawers or file cabinets, often forgotten even by the people who printed them.
But the pattern could finally be changing. InfoTrends Inc., a Massachusetts-based consulting firm for the digital imaging industry, has forecast that 2007 will be turn out to be the high point for per-capita use of “cut-size sheets” of paper in the United States. In 2008, the organization predicts, each man, woman and child will use 4,847 sheets of the office paper, down from 4,883 sheets next year.
“No one is going to totally eliminate the use of paper, but more and more companies are realizing the benefits” of converting an increasing amount of paper into digital files, said Daryl Amy, president of Convergence Consulting, an Arkansas company that specializes in information management.
“This is happening more and more.”
Paperless office systems — with records stored on computers instead of in file cabinets — were until recently used primarily by large corporations and government agencies rather than small- and medium-sized businesses. Now, analysts say, falling computer storage costs and better electronic indexing systems are bringing paperless technologies to smaller companies.
Associated Business Systems, a Portland, Ore., company that sells and services copy machines, fax machines and other office equipment, decided about three years ago to expand into paperless office systems.
The new business line made sense given what ABS was already doing. Many of the copiers it sells and services digitize documents as well as reproduce them. It was a simple matter to add information-management software — in ABS’ case, a system called DocuWare — to the services the company sold.
Now information-management systems are 10 percent of the company’s business, and its fastest-growing division.
But ABS president Craig Knouf said corporate customers need to realize that cutting their paper use involves more than simply scanning pieces of paper rather than copying them. Companies, he said, should rethink the way their work is organized from beginning to end if they want to maximize the gains.
Employees at Platt Electric Supply Inc., an electrical supply wholesaler with 95 branches in six Western states, are also excited about their paperless systems. Indeed, they show them off with a near religious enthusiasm.
“We wanted to find ways of eliminating waste and redundancy,” said president Jay Platt. “If you have paper systems you have lots of people entering information, lots of times, in lots of locations. We wanted to find ways to have people do it once and never again.”
Desks in the company’s Beaverton, Ore., headquarters are without drawers, and there are no signs of file cabinets.
Matt Holt, the credit manager, recently showed a visitor a wall that two years ago was covered with file cabinets full of paper records. The records, scanned by two employees over a three-month period, are now stored on the company’s computer disk rack, about 6 feet tall and 2 feet wide.
That rack has enough capacity to hold about one-quarter of the information in the U.S. Library of Congress, said Bill Currie, the company’s chief information officer.
“I can’t imagine going back to a paper-based system,” Currie said.