The idea of a “paperless office” has been around since the 1970s but seems just as far away now as it did back then. While new technologies have improved the ways we can create, store and send information, people still seem to like handling paper.

A survey of UK and European businesses commissioned in 2001 by Xerox found between 79% and 81% did not expect offices to be paper free in the next ten years. Only Spain had a majority (53%) that thought that all paper-based processes would be replaced by 2011.

Furthermore another 2001 study found that the use of email in the workplace can lead to a 40% increase in paper consumption – and that’s not taking into account additional paper used to print information found on the Internet.

So the paperless office concept is now being redefined to be a bit more realistic. New thinking allows the use of paper where necessary, but recognizes that many tasks are more efficiently done electronically.

Bill Gates and Microsoft
One of the best examples of a business that has gone at least partially paperless is Microsoft. *

In 1996, Microsoft founder Bill Gates looked at where the company was still using paper. He found over 1000 paper forms, for everything from recruitment and employee benefits to procurement and proxy voting on stock. But more than that, he found that paper consumption was a symptom of a bigger problem – administrative processes that were too complicated and time-intensive.

From those1000 forms, almost everything is now done electronically. Microsoft’s almost 50,000 employees are connected on Microsoft’s intranet and use that to access the appropriate electronic form to do almost anything. Only 60 paper forms remain company-wide. Of those 10 are required by law and 40 are required by outside parties with paper-based systems.

Gates estimates that the savings from converting to electronic forms was $40m in first year alone. The biggest savings were in reduction in processing costs – accounting firms estimate that most paper orders cost $145 per transaction, mostly in people’s time. But Microsoft’s electronic processing reduces that to $5 per transaction.

Moreover, by eliminating many administrative chores, employees were freed to do more important work. Gates says, “Replacing paper processes with digital processes liberates knowledge workers to do productive work… Our internal tools have two goals: to use software to handle routine tasks, eliminating wasted time and energy for our knowledge workers; and to free people to do more difficult work and handle exceptions.”

And Gates feels that shows employees the company’s priorities. “When employees see a company eliminate bottlenecks and time-draining routine administrative chores from their workdays, they know that the company values their time – and wants them to use it profitably,” he says.

Paperless options
There are many tasks that are done better and more efficiently when done electronically, such as:

• Internet as library – This is one area where most people are in agreement. The vast wealth of knowledge on the Internet and the tools that allow you to search through it are far better than using an old card catalogue and hunting through a library.

“Easy searches and hypertext links are the major reasons electronic encyclopaedias have overtaken print encyclopaedias in popularity,” says Gates.

• E-invoicing and E-payment – Every business has heard “The cheque’s in the mail”. But when your money matters are handled electronically, there is less room for excuses. Send invoices via email and request that customers pay electronically – it saves on time, postage and paper.
  
  
• Document storage - Filing, archiving and document retrieval are all tasks that favour digital methods. It is far easier to store documents on a computer or network than to have a room full of filing cabinets. Documents that come in paper form from an outside source can be scanned and then put into the electronic system. Very few documents actually need to be kept in paper form.

Why we will never be completely paperless

A recent book, The Myth of the Paperless Office by Richard Harper and Abigail Sellen, looked at the use of paper and how it has increased with the introduction of new digital technology.

Harper says, “Putting new technologies in place doesn’t necessarily reduce the amount of paper used, rather it may simply shift the point at which documents are printed out.”

Rather than making copies of a document and then distributing it, now a document will be sent electronically. But the receiver will often still print out the document to work with it. In the UK, 75% of workers still prefer to print emails out and read them in paper format rather than on screen.

Gates says, “Most people, when they’re trying to organise a long document, like to spread out the pages on a table so that they can see them all at once – difficult to do with a PC! [And] until we get a breakthrough in flatscreen technology… books and magazines still can’t be beat for readability and portability.”

Sellen agrees, “Until such time as digital technologies can provide equal or better support for many of the tasks that are central to using information, the future for paper continues to look bright…”

* See Business @ the Speed of Thought by Bill Gates