Paper is the devil.
Strong words, I know, especially from an avid reader and author such as myself. But it is true.
The devil, according to the priests I know, lulls you in and compromises you without you even knowing it. All is fine, and then one day you notice how bad it is. Like a drinking problem, for instance. That first drink didn’t seem so bad.
The same can arguably be said about paper. It seems benign. In fact, many of us love it. And we sure have lived with it for a long time.
But paper costs us a lot. Quietly.
Each year, the U.S. spends between $25 billion and $35 billion on filing, storing and retrieving paper, according to research firm, Gartner (News - Alert). This doesn’t even count the cost of printing resources or the maintenance to keep them running.
And even with this big chunk of money we put toward paper storing and filing, we still lose roughly 7.5 percent of the paper we possess, according to PriceWaterhouseCoopers, and another 3.5 percent is misfiled. If we went without paper, according to Association for Information and Image Management, we could boost productivity by nearly 30 percent.
Yet we hardly suspect paper. We love it, in fact. But we also love our iPads and smartphones, and who would live without their laptop? And unlike paper, we don’t usually lose our digital documents thanks to search technology such as Google (News - Alert) or Apple’s Spotlight.
Nor do digital documents take up much space in the office like paper does.
We’ve made the transition from handwritten letters and essays to digital versions, but yet we still cling to reading from paper. The truth is that digital is just as good if not better, however. Yet we have a love affair with paper, and we hardly suspect the damage it is doing to our businesses and our economy.
That’s why I argue that paper is the devil. It hurts is quietly. Instead of printing documents for our records, we should use services such as Google Drive. Instead of using a paper fax, we should go digital with fax-over-IP using a solution such as AudioCodes’ (News - Alert) fax ATA. Instead of collecting a paper signature, we should actually use the digital signature technology sitting right under our noses.
As much as I like paper, I have to say that it has sweet-talked us. There is something far better out there now, yet we still print an average of 45 pages per day per employee, according to a recent green office survey.
It is time to cast out the devil.