Even with technology, we still can’t have paperless offices

“Please consider the environment before printing this email,” Mr Fredrick Okoth, a Nairobi-based accountant, read in an email he had just printed. It was too late.

He is among the many office workers whose obsession with printed material have defied the digital hype. Many people still find themselves with the urge to see it on paper, write it on paper and store it on paper.

“It is like I have to hold it in my hand, read it, mark, underline and refer to it again and again to be satisfied. I am in love with paper and I feel pain when it has to be disposed of,” Mr Okoth told DN2.

Indeed, huge office cabinets, overflowing waste paper baskets, humming printers in office corners and workers leaving offices with bulging briefcases and files in hand have defined the man-office relationship for many years.

But the 21st Century has seen a major shift in the way documents are produced, sent and stored. Companies have, with time, become obsessed with going digital as the significance of physical print “fades” in strategy and future plans.

Media companies have led the way after print circulation began falling and readers migrated to reading online. Some of the biggest newspapers, including Britain’s The Independent, have gone fully going digital.

The result? Job cuts and pressure to have material online first. 

In Kenya, most of the government processes are available online, including filling forms to search for a company name, transferring vehicle ownership, applying for a driving licence and bidding for tenders. Letters have mostly been replaced by e-mails. 

But is the world really ready for paperless offices, or is it simply myth whose time will never come?

Opinion is divided whether this scenario has changed over time amidst all the hype, even with the coming of documentation technology like cloud computing.

EXPENSIVE PAPER

While many recognise that great steps have been made in the attempts to eliminate the dependence on paper, others believe that paper is here to stay.

The latter school of thought recently received backing from statistics by the UK Publishers’ Association, which said last year that the sales of printed books grew for the first time in four years, reversing a trend towards electronic books that peaked in 2012.

Instead, e-book sales fell by 1.6 per cent in 2015, the first drop recorded in the seven years the association has been monitoring the digital book market. 

“Digital continues to be an incredibly important part of the industry, but it would appear there remains a special place in the consumer’s heart for aesthetic pleasure that printed books can bring,” the association’s chief executive, Mr  Stephen Lotinga, was quoted by The Guardian as saying.

In 2015, another predictive report by  Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Ltd (Deloitte Global) predicted that printed copies would continue to be the main thing even as smartphone adoption soared by 1,000 per cent. “…print books will continue to dominate the publishing industry and account for 80 per cent of all book sales by dollars…” says the 14th edition of Technology, Media & Telecommunications (TMT) Predictions released last week.

So, what is wrong with paper?

Mr Robert Kimani, a former general manager of BrighterMonday, an East African online corporate staffing company, is among those who believe in the reality of paperless office, a tradition the company he served in for many years. Most of their businesses are transacted online and involve huge volumes of documentation, so using paper would pile significant pressure on their office operations, he says.

“Paper is cumbersome, and given the amount of work we do every day, it would mean a lot of expenses in terms of administration and filing, which come with more economic burdens. This is why we eliminated the huge office cabinets and created more space to utilise for other things. Our workforce is happy too, thanks to our paperless orientation,” Mr Kimani told DN2 earlier while still serving at the firm.

He believes there are more advantages of going paperless as necessity drives the need for electronic documentation and storage.  He cites information security  and ease of access to documents stored in paperless formats  among the key merits.

In 2014, Kenya increased duty on imported paper from 10 per cent to 25 per cent on the collective advice of East African Community ministers.

To ease the economic burden of using paper, Kenya Power and Lighting Company (KPL) began sending electronic bills when printing and delivering paper bills to its customers proved unnecessarily costly.

“The cost of sending a paper bill through the post office is Sh35 while the cost of sending an electronic bill via SMS is Sh1.53. Kenya Power, therefore, saves an estimated Sh43.5 million per month through the electronic bill dispatch and has so far saved approximately Sh174 million,” says  former KPLC boss Ben Chumo, who retired recently.

Storing data on paper is also burdensome. Instead of the piles that characterise most government offices, paperless storage means offices can be set up in smaller spaces. It also improves the image of the office since it looks neater.

With paper, there is the risk of loss and destruction. Today, a simple search software like Ava Find can locate documents with just the first three letters of search name. The time one  saves many  business hours, and is cost-effective. The data is not only secure thanks to a series of available backups, but is also readily retrievable.

“Technology might sometimes fail but obviously, anything in the cloud has various backups; the fact that I have sent a document via e-mail means it has a backup somewhere and more secondary backups. You cannot compare it with paper, which can be destroyed in say a fire, and you have no means  whatsoever of recovering such data. I think going paperless is also a greener option than cutting millions of trees to make paper,” Mr Kimani had said during the earlier interview.

REALITY OR MYTH?

Despite the many advantages of paperless offices, the reality on the ground leaves the idea largely a myth. In their book, The Myth of the Paperless Office, Social-Digital System researchers Abigail Sellen and Richard Harper say that, although the paperless office has been proclaimed for the last 30 years, it remains largely unattained. They note that, instead, computers have increased the amount of printing done.

Closer home, many businesses still demand paper evidence for  transactions. Most notable are banks, rent collection agents and institutions, which demand receipts for payments made. Until recently, some airlines had been asking for physical air tickets while job applications still carry  “triplicate copies of testimonials” as part of the requirements.

A number of companies have also advocated for online application platforms to minimise the number of hard copies reaching their offices.

“I think what will likely fit us is paper-light, rather than paperless, because businesses still rely on print. I recently tried to pay my house rent through mobile-to-bank transfer and got an electronic confirmation. It was not easy to convince the landlord that I had actually paid the rent. It is an issue of acceptability and trust of electronic documents,” says Mr Daniel Ng’endo, who lives in Githurai on the outskirts of Nairobi.

A recent paper by an American information storage company, Iron Mountain, suggests that the use of paper is actually increasing in almost a third (32 per cent) of firms. According to Iron Mountain’s research, more than three-quarters (77 per cent) of invoices that arrive in PDF format get printed and almost half (45 per cent) of paper documents scanned were created digitally.

Mr Christian Toon, head of information risk at Iron Mountain says, “Much of our paper use is simply ingrained in our culture – we are used to receiving some documents by post, for example. Our paper habits are hard to shake. For the majority, a paper-free office is unrealistic and unattainable.”

The firm cites data protection and compliance concerns, as well as budget restrictions, as some of the factors getting in the way of a move to  cloud storage.

The benefits of using less paper are, evidently, higher, but like any new idea, it will take time to  be completely  acceptable. Experts predict that paper usage in offices will diminish with necessity, leaving only the most necessary documentation on paper. The key driver will be accessibility to these paperless documents before more people adopt them. The high uptake of smartphones and Internet connections in Africa provides a ray of hope that the myth might one day become a reality.

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GO DIGITAL

Tips to make your offices paper light/less

•  If you don’t have to have a document in hard copy, don’t print it.

•  Scan receipts, contact cards, and documents that you use regularly and save them in common folders. 

•  Make databases by dealing with  information when you get it; enter the data into the system and keep updating online.

•  Use technology to make backups and use the Adobe Reader on your smartphone to scan documents and store in online avenues like Google Docs. 

•  If you have a chance to pay any bill online, do so. You can also agree with service providers to email receipts instead of printing them. Also, ask for paperless statements from banks and print only when absolutely necessary.

•  Instead of buying many printers, invest in scanners and hard disks for storage.

•  Dealing with electronics documents can be a bit tricky though, so as soon as you choose to go paperless, consider getting your an insurance package that  covers the loss of electronic documents, including any damage that might arise and the cost of replacing it.