Paperless Offices - Still Elusive ?

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One of the important changes the office has gone through in the recent years is probably the thrust to move to its paperless avataar. So has this move been successful to the extent ath was probably conceived sometime ago - well the answer at least to me is a big no. Use of paper in offices has definitely come down but I still definitely see paper being used and that does not seem to change all that fast.

Factors assisting the move towards paperless offices...

• Paper is used more and more as a medium for sharing and discussions rather than for storage. Again I would say that the extent to which this statement is true differs in different parts of the world. Europeans seem to still employ paper as a storage medium as compared to the Americans.
• With the evolution of Web 2.0 and drive towards online collaboration platforms for text, graphical objects, web pages etc the need to share hard copies on paper will further reduce
• The fact that each paper that we use and waste kills a tree (or at least part of it) is becoming more and more of a concern all over the world.
• The quality of paper has been increasing considerably which means that if technology allows us we can reuse a sheet of paper for printing more than once

Factors holding back the move towards paperless offices...

• People have been used to use of paper and as any other habit this will also die hard
• Paper just like to feel, mark and carry information on paper
• Advances in technology also means that we can get more and more real life prints on paper with colors etc and this attracts people to print what they see on a computer on paper also
• New users of computers (which is a sizeable %) fear the security of their e-data. They feel more relaxed everyday when they go to bed at night with paper printouts.

Although all in all the paperless office seems like a elusive target, one advancement today by Xerox labs (albeit still in the lab testing stage) could help us strike a middle path betweek a paper and a paperless office.

Read here for further details.