one thing you can say for our power-hungry, world-heat-inducing, rain-forest-destroying western civilization – at least we’re starting to look in the right direction. we’ve got blog action day, carbon credit systems, and it seems every major car co{readmore}mpany is on the verge of producing a car that makes the world a better place.

but walk into your average office space and you will still see one thing – a massive amount of paper going to waste everyday. the idea of a paperless office has been around for years now (it first appeared in Business Week in 1975) – but are we getting any closer to that being a reality?

the introduction of the new search method to find your digital data (think google desktop and spotlight), instead of spending so much time organizing it allows us to keep everything digitally. massive amounts of data can now be kept without worrying about running out of space or losing something forever.

but it still requires a huge amount of effort to take any integrated office system and completely change its procedures. so, while an employee might do most of their work on a computer, emailing and using online software, if they must in the end output to a system that has been around since the 80′s and creates reams of waste, there is a breakdown that must be fixed.

so our conclusion and suggestion is this – advanced digital methods of your business’ processes should be implemented whenever a new process is created. if you suddenly need to start tracking something that you didn’t before – do it all through a computer system. if you find you should begin tracking more customer information – make sure it is done digitally and paperless.

having just started all our business processes from scratch at the recent launch of apt design we were able to start things off on the right foot. we use a great project management system , email to communicate, and keep all records, files, and notes digitally. our paper output has been surprisingly low. we’re not yet paperless, but we’re getting close. check back in a few years and see if we’ve made it.

until then let us know how you have trimmed waste and gone digital in your business.