The idea of a paperless office being the ‘office of the future’ dates way back to 1975. Now, with technology being what it is, we’ve finally started to catch up with the dream, and paperless office installations are becoming a more common reality every year.
There are a number of reasons to go paperless, both to do with office installation services and beyond.
Paperless offices offer the following advantages over the old paper systems:
Better Use of Physical Space: Perhaps the most notable advantage from the perspective of an office installation service is the use of space. Physical files and paperwork can stack up very quickly. Most offices have at least a cabinet overflowing with files—paperwork, contracts, expense reports, receipts, payroll information, and so forth. Many offices, particularly those in industries that involve a lot of recordkeeping, such as the finance and insurance industries, will have a massive room dedicated to files. With a paperless office, the number of files that would ordinarily fill an entire warehouse could fit in a single off-site server rack.
Security: To put it simply, you can’t password-protect a printout. Paperless offices allow high-level encryption to give you a much greater level document security, and some security systems allow you to track who accessed a file for greater chain-of-custody control.
Backups: Backup systems and fail-safes can ensure that your data will never be lost due to natural disasters. Backup servers are kept in separate facilities miles away, ensuring that a single flood or fire will not send your most valuable documents up in smoke.
Greater Accessibility: Digital file systems are often organized and indexed, making sure that your data is never more than a quick search away. Digital files are also never checked out and forgotten, or mis-filed when they’re replaced, allowing you to make sure that your important documents are always at your fingertips. Digital files are also accessible remotely, allowing employees with sufficient clearance and secure connections to get the files they need, when they need them.
Eco-Friendliness: The ‘save the trees’ angle goes without saying, but the deforestation is just a small part of the carbon footprint made by processing documents. Pulp and paper mills generate a considerable amount of pollution, producing lead through its water emissions and CO2 (a major contributor to global warming) and sulfur dioxide (a major cause of acid rain) in its air emissions.
In addition to being convenient and profitable, paperless offices can make a considerable positive impact on the environment, greatly reducing your company’s carbon footprint. If you want to go paperless and convert your document storage into a productive workspace, give us a call to learn about how our office installation services can help.