In my office there is a constant battle battle between paper and “screen” (as the managers call it).
Years ago before computers filing was simple. For every event there was a sheet of paper, that was viewed by a few people - each making a photocopy if required - and eventually the sheet of paper went into a lever arch file or filing cabinet. But perhaps I should replace the word simple with understandable, as if that sheet of paper was later required it would involve going down to a cold dar store room and searching for about 10 minutes.
Today we have two systems operating in parallell, sheets of paper still arrive in the mail and are handled in the traditional way, but how should we file emails? One way is to print them, but not only does this appear uncool it actually costs money in toner, pritner wear, paper, even in a small to medium sized company. Let us not forget the first goal of every business is to make a profit.
My current solution is to have people “print” emails using a PDF driver, and store the PDFs on a network drive. This provides the familiar satisfaction of “printing”. Every day a cron job backs up the network hard drive onto one of 7 drives which are then taken to the storeroom and put in a fireproof data safe.
One problem remains, and that is incoming paper mail. We could scan the documents, and there are plenty of commercial “solutions” around to do that, but there are so many “original” documents such as signed letters that must be kept. Continue reading ‘Paper is dead, long live paper’
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