As we enter 2025, the business landscape is increasingly moving toward automation, remote work, and heightened digital security. Relying on paper records has become not only inefficient but also a potential obstacle to progress. The growing need for seamless collaboration across hybrid teams, combined with stricter compliance requirements, has made the limitations of paper records even more apparent. For companies looking to stay competitive and agile, embracing a paperless office is now essential—not just a matter of convenience but of strategic necessity.

2020 was a leap year for the document management industry. Businesses still holding onto paper went digital—finally. It’s a two-part process: paper is scanned and then paper is shredded. But some businesses are still waiting in line for their own digital revolution. Until a high-volume scanner comes along and turns those old paper records (that are expensive to store and cumbersome to retrieve) into lightweight electronic files, you are obligated to take care of them. In most industries, regulations require retention. That means keeping documents for a defined period until their expiration date. While we recommend a solid paperless office strategy for all forward-thinking companies, here five tips to secure and protect physical documents from potential threats in the meantime. 

Paper doesn't just harm the environment and your company’s productivity—and therefore your revenue—paper also harms your reputation: 87% of consumers surveyed say they look more positively on a company if they run 100% paper free. And that's how you want your customers to see your company.

Startups do things digitally. But companies that have been around for decades largely don’t. It seems impossible to believe, but 82% of companies are still paper-based. 

“With all the lip service paid to innovation, it’s astounding that most businesses still use technology invented more than 2,000 years ago. We’ve entered the era of 3D printing, artificial intelligence, and missions to Mars — yet only 18 percent of companies consider themselves paperless.”

—Corp! Magazine

With cloud servers and apps like Monday, Trello, and Evernote replacing paper calendars, notebooks, and whiteboards, it seems crazy to think that less than 20% of all companies in 2020 operate digitally. Not so crazy, though, when you consider that computers weren’t even part of the office environment 40 years ago.

Let’s take a look at the brief history of paper to digital documentation and nail down when paper processes will finally go digital.

A paper-based archive requires a lot of work to b maintained in an excellent condition. After all, paper is a pretty vulnerable material. 

Have you introduced any protective measures when it comes to the safety of your business documents? If the answer is negative, the time is right to start thinking about ensuring the integrity of your archive. Paper documents are vulnerable in many ways and here are some of the main reasons why you should start thinking about their protection.

Businesses deal with all kinds of operational costs. Some of these are much easier to cut out than others. While most focus on the largest types of corporate expenditure, there’s one costly item that often remains out of the equation. This costly item is office paper.

For years, businesses have been told that a paperless office is truly the way of the future. However, during day to day business operations you likely still use paper documents as a way to keep information moving and within your line of sight. This forces one to think, will paper documents ever truly be a thing of the past? Or, are we destined to keep paper documents floating around the office regardless of the technology that comes our way?