Dreaming of a Paperless Office

It's always been my ambition to reduce the amount of paper that we produce, for me the paperless office is more than just a pipe dream it's a goal that we should try to reach, albeit one that's probably impossible to attain. Here at Convallis Software we've done a reasonable job of reducing the paper that we produce, our printer is rarely used although I'd prefer to say never.

But it is difficult, when information needs to be shared at a meeting for instance, it can be a lot easier to print and take it along than to use digital means of dissemination. For many it's also a habit, a document is created, printed and then filed probably never to see the light of day again, why?

But even if we can reduce the paper produced in our offices, we have no control over that produced by other organisations and sent to us in the form of junk mail, bills, tax demands etc. Much of it gets a cursory glance and is then either shredded or put into the paper recycling pile, which we all do right? What a waste, at least it can be recycled.

So here are a few things that you can do to achieve a paperless office:

1. Before printing, ask yourself if it's really necessary
2. Save files in a central location easily accessible to all those that need the document, such as a file server, Microsoft Sharepoint or in a cloud service such as Office 365. Ensure that all who need to see the document can access it, let people know it's there by email.
3. If possible email a document rather than printing and posting it.
4. When printing an invoice or order acknowledgement off of the internet, print to file rather than paper. Use the XPS printer driver or a PDF printer driver if you prefer, save the file in a suitable place.
5. Ask suppliers to email invoices whenever possible.
6. Instead of printing and taking paper documents to a meeting, copy electronic versions onto your tablet and use those instead (assuming you have a tablet).
7. On the subject of tablets, use it to record your meeting notes if you can (a tablet with a stylus is easiest for this).