Pulpless fiction?

In the early 1990s, there was a remarkable photo taken among a forest of towering trees. In the middle of these was a tall stack of paper and sitting on top of those was Bill Gates, perched with a shiny CD disc in hand. The allegory was clear: all that paper now fitted on this one CD. Has the paperless era finally arrived?

Modern technology shoots a lot of information at us. Paper encourages more single tasking and that can actually be more productive.

Dr Nicola Millard, BT

More than 20 years later and that question still hasn't been settled. It goes back even further. The term was coined in 1975, during a Business Week article mulling the role of technology and automation in the workplace. Back then, it involved text-editing typewriters and fun names like Redactron. But the conversations remained the same: how can technology make business more efficient and competitive?

Since then, the paperless office has remained largely a concept. In fact, paper use infamously rose as offices turned more technologically adept. But in the past few years, there has been a general change in how we harness tech for biz, namely through the rise of connectivity, mobile devices, online storage and industrial-scale digitisation. Somehow, today's office feels more paperless, but is it just because we peddle much more binary information? Where is the paperless office today?

"There are a lot of overlapping technologies that help create digital environments in modern offices," says Avi Rose of ARX, a digital signature solution specialist. "Content management systems, Sharepoint, ERPs - all these feed into each other. The paperless office has been a long-time ambition that from time to time became a new reality as new technologies arrived. Trends in the past few years have certainly also pushed for using less paper and it's a much more realistic concept today."

The factors prompting a smaller paper footprint are clear. Cost-saving and efficiency are the major drivers, especially as automation becomes more prevalent in businesses. The pitch on ARX's site claims the process of getting approval signatures can be brought down from days, or weeks, to minutes - and done so far more securely. That's a common theme among evangelists of digitisation. Automation also leads to better governance and regulation compliance. For example, effective real-time inspections on factory lines are possible once the processes are tracked digitally.

"The advent of automated business processes, streamlined workflows and electronic forms have led to lower paper environments," says Ian Nel of Kyocera. "Early adopters of smart printing environments and document management services have realised this change."

Another motivation is to go green - reducing paper use is good for a company's altruistic spirit and is sometimes even a legal requirement. An office less reliant on paper is also more agile. Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert comics and a serial entrepreneur, once tried to overcome the problem of editing digital documents in a paper office: a manilla envelope with a pocket for a floppy disk that came alongside the printed version of the document. You read the paper, then edited the digital copy. We have certainly come a long way since, but collaboration has also become much more involved.

The agile office is a concept popular with BT's leading futurist Dr Nicola Millard and she often ponders the role of paper in the modern workplace: "Future offices want to be agile, so you can't rely on paper. It's slow, cumbersome and not great at facilitating real-time input from different parties. It also takes up space, which is an increasingly expensive commodity for modern companies, not to mention that it's not that easy to archive and search."

But that's not the entire picture, she adds. Paper remains an incredibly effective technology on many levels. It doesn't crash and doesn't need charging. A simple act like writing down a phone number and finding it later can still be much smoother with a scrap of paper and a pen. As users, we're also deeply attuned to it and research overwhelmingly shows paper is far more effective for memory retention - especially with long-form content.

Digital technology is struggling to replace paper's more specific advantages. Today's workplaces confuse activity with productivity and there isn't much room given for reflection of information. As Millard puts it, you rarely see someone read a book in an office: "Modern technology shoots a lot of information at us. Paper encourages more single tasking and that can actually be more productive."

This quick-turnaround, immediate-information environment - loaded with distractions such as instant messaging and e-mails - interrupts us more than we appreciate. Multi-tasking is mostly a myth and not placing singular focus on a task often leads to lesser results. As such, paper remains attractive because it gives a mental corral for ingesting information. This is one reason why book sales remain strong - digital makes us prone to think less and react more.

Overcoming that is among the final challenges to a near-paperless existence. But there are many areas that can already benefit by exorcising paper from process, says ARX's Rose: "The technology is there, but change really depends on specific segments and sectors in business. You can get a paperless solution, but what is the value to your organisation?"

Citing car rentals, insurance and banking as examples, Rose says the right digitisation strategy makes a big difference and a company should identify specific areas in its business that it can digitise. Look for processes that can be transformed and impact across several areas. HR paperwork such as payroll and leave forms are good examples. But don't be over-ambitious: paper touches fundamental parts of business and failure to transform can mean the company quickly losing its appetite for paperless concepts.

There are still other limitations that keep paper in play and these won't be eliminated without a new technology that acts like paper and espouses its versatility. Tablet devices have their uses here, but also come with large, alienating differences and drawbacks.

The truly paperless office is and will remain an oddity even in our connected times. But modern technology has made it possible to wean many areas of business off pulp. The real problem is not the means, but the people and practicality. We like paper and there is merit to keep it around. Yet with the right technology, at least paperwork can be curbed.

This article was first published in Brainstorm magazine. Click here to read the complete article at the Brainstorm website.