What is Paperless?
Paperless is a term that has been recently introduced into the world of business and commerce. It is a term that is used to describe the process of reducing the amount of paper used in businesses and organisations. It proposes exchanging printed documents for digital files.
Although the paperless solution is quite new and a lot of businesses and organizations are still wrapping their heads around the idea and possible implementations in their respective workplaces, the concept has existed as far back as modern computing has taken over the business industry.
Many offices have been implementing a basic and minimal form of paperless activity and transactions even without realizing it. A simple scanning of documents is a very good example. Or even sending digital receipts in place of actually printed invoices.
OCR technology
Forerunner to the concept of the paperless solution is the introduction of OCR technology, short for optical character recognition or optical character reader, which allows for text recognition and translation of printed, typed or handwritten texts into computer-readable texts. The emergence of different digital and archiving companies in the 1980s through 1990s widely relied on the uses of OCR for their filing and attaching annotations into digital documents for easier classification and retrieval.
Portable Document Format
Nowadays, files saved using portable document format, plainly called PDF, are the file format of choice when employing paperless functions.
Most end users, whether new or experts in computing, are more or less familiar with pdf files. Users have encountered this file format at some point by simply emailing documents or saving them on backup folders and hard drives.
Advantages of Going Paperless
With the introduction of better technologies, the idea of going paperless within the company or organization is becoming easier and better. Still, many have remained hesitant and undecided about employing paperless solutions despite its numerous benefits and advantages.
It reduces operation costs. Companies save more money by simply reducing the usage of paper. Less paper also means fewer expenses on storage, printing, and filing materials, the cost of maintenance on printers, inks and toners, and even arch lever folders and filing cabinets.
Organized documents. For a long time, messy tables and printed files in disarray are common situations that can be observed in a normal office. It has always been time-consuming to organise and do proper sorting on the crammed stack of files. The paperless solution gives us the ability properly organise and quickly locate documents. This equates to more effective and efficient results at work.
File sharing and easy retrieval. Converting the files into digital formats provides the flexibility of access for everyone in the company. With the introduction of cloud technology and the right permission, any user can have access to documents from anywhere at any given time. Business travelers can easily save their files, transfer and access them over the network and internet, freeing them from the hassle of carrying bulky folders and documents.
Automatic backups. Maintaining electronic files assures you that your documents can have multiple copies saved on different storage media. Further, this process can be scheduled to execute automatically, effectively doing away with manually saving and backing up of files.
Ecologically friendly. Reducing the use of paper reduces the need to cut down more trees. Additionally, it also reduces the need to use consumables like inks containing harmful chemicals and pollutants.
Promoting Paperless Solutions with Able Home and Office and Toshiba Copiers
For years, Able Home and Office has been a partner with Toshiba in distributing top-of-the-line printers and copiers. This partnership has brought unparalleled printing and copying solutions to many businesses and organisations in the country.
But aside from that, recognizing the need for digital processes, Toshiba has embedded the eFiling feature coupled with scanning functions on its earlier models distributed by Able Home and Office.
Most recently, Toshiba has introduced Electronic Document Management (EDM) solutions that aimed to “transform electronic and paper-based documents into intelligent data”. This helps promote enhanced productivity, efficiency, and security.
With these, Able Home and Office gets a better opportunity to confidently promote and implement paperless solutions to different businesses. A complete paperless solution not only helps businesses but also helps the environment.
Think paperless. Think Able.