How many times have you heard a company claim they're paperless? How about the marketing slogans of the Fortune 500 such as "Go Green, Go Paperless or Go Paperless Save Trees" promoting the benefits of electronic billing or e-services sometimes with an environmental spin.

False Claims

Those are mostly false claims about one specific paperless aspect of a company. Most people assume that a proclamation of paperlessness applies to the entire business operation. This couldn't be further from the truth. Paper is alive and well. 

The MYTH

The marrow of this blog and our future paperless blogs draws from The Myth of the Paperless Office by Abigail J. Sellen and Richard H.R. Harper as well as our own journey. It's a rare one of kind research and scientific analysis for understanding the paperless office. We highly recommend getting your hands on a used copy. 

3 Mind-Blowing Myths

Paperless Myth #1) Paperless offices are everywhere

It's no wonder the word "Myth" is the crux of the title of the aforementioned book because there is no such thing as the paperless office. A company may have one paperless aspect such as invoicing customers, but the entirety of the business is not paperless. Sellen and Harper searched for companies successfully going paperless and never found one. Ironically, paper consumption goes ups 40% after email adoption. This is the new normal considering everyone's had email for a couple decades.

Paperless Myth #2) Technology eliminates paper

Installing scanning software, document management technology and deploying computer hardware does nothing to solve the paperless problem. We've replaced typewriters with computers, but desks and tables still pile up with paper. The habits of people are stronger than paperless technology. Company paperless policies are ineffective at curbing bad paper behavior. Sellen and Harper's research uncovered employees storing paper documents in their car to comply with a paperless policy at work. 

Paperless Myth #3) Thinking your business is paperless

What's worse then someone else thinking your business is paperless when it's not? You guessed it. You thinking your business is paperless when it's not. Paperlessness is not having some paperless business processes it's having an end to end solution. If you're one of the 95% of businesses still getting paper mail, then you're far from paperless and still suffering from falsely thinking so. Learn the 13 Ways a Virtual Mailbox Eliminates Paper Headaches.

The 9 Pains of Paper

Paper causes suffering, headaches and chaos

Pain #1) Paper is NOT accessible or sharable (it's one person at a time)

Pain #2) Paper has to be hand delivered (what a waste of resources)

Pain #3) Paper takes up space (another waste)

Pain #4) Paper is expensive to store and retrieve (this makes no sense)

Pain# 5) Paper loves to accumulate (piles and piles of it)

Pain# 6) Paper hides the one thing you're looking for (classic wheel spinning)

Pain# 7) Paper creates clutter (clutter is embarrassing) 

Pain #8) Paper is a waste of time (nothing like paying for staff you don't need)

Pain# 9) Paper steals your peace of mind (no thanks) 

There's a Solution

Paper is the ring leader of all 17 invisible expenses™. Paper's been woven into the way we do things for centuries and now it's found a way into our DNA before we could eradicate it. Fortunately, The Ultimate Paperless Back Office™ by invizibiz.biz is the first and only 100% certified (we are creating our own client certification for this) paperless virtual bookkeeping service. We've closed the loop on The Myth of the Paperless Office with a killer virtual address. In the words of Sellen and Harper, "Be a workplace reaching out to the future rather than being trapped in an inefficient past."