Paper has, and still does, have a vital role to play in modern life and business, everything from mailing items to customers to notices to customers to memos and financial reports or employee files at work. Paper companies are hard a work providing the right papers for their business clients, and a modern office makes use of both computers and papers for work. This makes for a fine combination, but modern managers must note that paper has its limits. An excess of paper at the office calls for secure paper shredders on the scene, and industrial shredders may be used, or a commercial paper shredder. Such secure paper shredders, in conjunction with the digital scanning of documents, can do a lot of good for a modern office and help it run more smoothly. Not that paper is obsolete in the modern office, far from it, but secure paper shredders should be called upon regularly to deal with excesses of paper. Why might these secure paper shredders be brought onto the scene to destroy documents like this?
The Hazards of Paper
Paper has an important role to play at the office, and that might not change anytime soon. Responsible managers will know the limits of paper, however, and call upon secure paper shredders and document scanning services to rein in paper before it becomes too much of a problem. One issue is losing or misfiling documents, which costs money and time to deal with. Even in the best of circumstances, it takes time to get up, find a paper document, use it, then file it back in place. Worse scenarios play out when paper documents are misfiled or lost, and this may happen more often when the office is cluttered with too much paper in boxes and filing cabinets. Lost documents may cost as much as $100-200 to replace, due to the time taken away from productive work for this effort. This can add up fast, and a company may lose a lot of money and time from recovering or re-creating so many documents.
Another issue is the physical problem of all those papers; that is, they take up a lot of room in filing cabinets and boxes, and this is room that could be put to use otherwise. Worse still, all of these papers constitute a very real fire hazard, meaning that a frayed electrical cord may touch papers with its hot wires and set them on fire. In other settings, a dropped match or lighter or sparks from damaged electrical devices may set drapes, rugs, and papers on fire. Another issue is security, since papers can be stolen or photographed by dishonest employees who use them for personal gain or for corporate espionage. And finally, papers are physical and their contents cannot easily be transmitted to remote workers such as those on board company jets or those who work from home. All of these problems and more are why secure paper shredders and document scanning services are used today.
What Document Scanning Can Do
A responsible manager may choose to hire document scanner services and secure paper shredders regularly to take care of excess papers at the office. When such professionals arrive, they will first scan all of the documents in question, and their digital copies may be stored in the company’s data server and/or their Cloud storage account online. Such scanner companies may scan and upload files rapidly and in industrial numbers, more than in-house talent could manage. Secure paper shredding will follow, when these safely scanned documents will be destroyed en masse. This shredded paper can then be set out for recycling rather than thrown away. Paper recycling is a major aspect of the global “go green” initiative, and companies can and probably should play their part.
Shredded and removed papers will no longer pose a fire hazard or information security threat, and all of their space can now be used for other purposes. What’s more, the digital file scan be easily shared between computers, and this is most helpful for remote employees or those who are working on board jets during business travel. Paper mail is too slow for this, but e-mail allows the easy sharing of digitally scanned documents.
