It's unquestionably ironic that in a time of incredible technological evolution, we most often don't think twice a second when it comes to getting yourself some "cool" technological equipment, which often isn't going to provide us any monetary benefit in return; but we have become rather unwilling to invest our money on technological innovation that has actually proven its value.

This sort of trend also is relevant to small and medium organizations, which generally exhibit an averse position towards new technology, they're unwilling to change their outdated, paper-based process to a new document management software geared towards a "paperless office".

The idea of the "paperless office" principally refers to the approach to transforming pretty much all paper documents into a digital format. That is certainly hard to expect in a world in which paper is the essential procedure of correspondence in almost all corporations. Years back, a great deal of companies started to digitize their records and documents: invoices, delivery notes, work reports, etc. Having said that, they more often than not equally kept a paper-version of all those documents, given that the digital format didn't have any 100 % legal support. This signifies that these firms not just simply stored two data formats of the same identical data file, in addition they doubled their work load. Logically, the technology that enabled the digitization procedure lost most of their fascination, and office spaces gradually over time turned into deposits of enormous amounts of paper, stored in folders or simple boxes. This essentially meant companies were dealing with a problem of enough space, but locating a document has also been like searching for a needle in a hay-stack.

Nevertheless, in today's times, numerous companies are currently seeking to function in accordance with the rules of the "paperless office", but the concept has not been put into practice on a large scale yet. Numerous companies, predominantly SMBs, are particularly reluctant to put into practice a decent document management system, and their doubts are usually backed up by a variety of misconceptions regarding the notion of the paperless office.

Widespread Paperless Office Software Myths

• The software programs are hard to gain the benefits of. In many instances, the first to operate the brand new document management software are often the people, which in general look upon the new application with caution. Not surprisingly, they have been accomplishing work with papers for lots of years, and they feel secure and secure and safe with their established approach of working. On the other hand, the verifiable truth is that most workers change opinion really fast, when they find a document in only a few seconds and experience for themselves how simple and fast it is to locate a data file with their company's brand new document management software.

• Electronic management of documents is less safe than paper-based techniques. Handling access to delicate paper documents is merely achievable through controlled access to the places where these documents are kept. This implies that everytime an employee requires a particular document, he or she will ought to be given access to these areas. Or in other words, almost all files and documents are accessible to virtually all employees. With an adequate document management system, however, safety and security is very significantly increased, as document access control is handled via user roles and hierarchical permissions. For instance, a special group of employees can view a document although not edit it, while a second group is able to read and modify this exact same document.

-The advantages of a high quality document management software program are only long-term advantages. As emphasized by companies that have already taken the steps towards the paperless office, when changing document-based processes for digital procedures, the added benefits pertaining to cost savings, improved overall performance and efficiency are instantaneous. Besides, the expenses connected with paper and space is notably cut down.

• To go paperless, you will have to eliminate all paper from your offices. This myth is incorrect. Certainly one of the crucial desired goals of any business taking the road towards the "paperless" office is lowering paper usage towards the maximum, not removing paper totally. Besides that, when paper usage is cut down, the correlated expenses are also reduced, but a enterprise most often gains most results from processing digital documents and automating its document processes. Last but not least, there is also the simple fact that legislation will always force businesses to retain a paper version of particular documents.

Towards the paperless office

Paper documents continue being the most common method of communication for quite a number of organizations, but it looks like these papers are inevitably disappearing from work locations, to make way for digitized documents. In fact, advanced institutions that have already begun digitizing their documents with a modern document management software solution have started enjoying the rewards from their resolution. They already have significantly more free space, swift document searches, hierarchical organization of business documents, selected user privileges associated with access, management and retrieval of delicate information, important cost cutbacks produced by paper waste and storage, considerably increased productivity and more eco-friendly procedures.

In conclusion, we are still in a period of transformation and progress, and it's going to take us some time to really be able to talk about "our paperless office".

Innovating with Document Management

In conclusion, greatly decreasing paper in working environments isn't actually an unreachable dream anymore. It's not a simple utopian illusion, but it is within our reach, on a worldwide level. It only needs both enterprise executives and workers to succeed over their resistance to transform and choose to get a document management system. When they do, the added advantages and positive improvement in their ways of doing business will be such that they will never decide to return to their old school ways.