The Sunday Mail
The usual procedure after receiving an email with important attachments is to print the documents and then file them in physical form. This eats up a lot of office space that could be utilised for other productive work.
Howdy folks!
If you walk into any office in Zimbabwe today, you are likely to be greeted by a desk with three big trays full of documents.
One is marked “Incoming”, another “Pending”, and the third “Outgoing”.
Behind that desk sits the boss in a swivel chair, feeling that as long as those trays are filled with paper, he/she is working hard.
The number of documents you pile in those three trays seemingly shows your relevance to the organisation.
Some people have a tendency of wanting to be seen to be very busy — albeit busy doing nothing in most cases. When you walk into their offices, they will pick a stale document from one of those three trays and start underlining a few lines. It will go on and on until the door is shut in your face.
Is the paper still relevant in the office set-up or it should be relegated to other places such as toilets? (There are now also paperless toilets elsewhere in the developed world.)
In many cases, in the work environment, before we print an email, there is a polite message that reads, “Please consider the environment before printing.”
But how many actually consider that before hitting the famous “print” button?
The idea is apparently to avoid wastages on not only paper, but toner as well, while doing justice to the environment.
It is estimated that 50 percent of the pages we print are never looked at.
The office can, therefore, take a whole different look if employees were to reduce the usage of paper for tasks that can simply be done on the computer to achieve similar results.
The typical paper-based filing systems that we normally find in most offices no longer match with the developments in technology that we now have.
And that mismatch translates into savings opportunities that should be tapped into.
The African Union is already running paperless meetings, including summits.
And the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa took a similar approach last year when it hosted its first paperless Summit in Madagascar.
African leaders have already shown that it can be done.
The savings that come with going paperless can also be demonstrated by Comesa’s paper requirements before going paperless.
For every Comesa policy organ meeting, they would use 1 000 reams of paper, weighing 2,500 kg, which require 60 full-grown trees to make.
This means about US$5 000 was being spent on paper only.
Additional costs would also come from storage and transportation.
In a Facebook response to Financial Express, Comesa said there are no plans yet to roll out a policy on common guidelines on paperless offices for member states, but added that “member states of Comesa are free to follow our lead”.
About a fortnight ago, the Zimbabwe Government sent a delegation to the Comesa secretariat to benchmark the set-up and operation of the Comesa system, which was used at last year’s Summit in Madagascar.
The spotlight is now on Zimbabwe to see the extent to which the country can take up paperless solutions. Over-reliance on paper has already shown how it tends to contribute immensely to deforestation and man-made climate change.
Organisations that are seriously concerned about climate change should, therefore, demonstrate that through how they consume paper.
Organisations like the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority have already made headway by introducing online application platforms for obtaining documents such as business partner numbers and tax clearance certificates; filing VAT, PAYE, income tax, presumptive tax and other returns.
There is still a huge opportunity for many companies to make savings from costs associated with filing.
The usual procedure after receiving an email with important attachments is to print the documents and then file them in physical form.
This eats up a lot of office space that could be utilised for other productive work.
Businesses can, therefore, make huge savings by creating virtual libraries where all the important documents that are downloaded can be saved and accessed through computers.
Even those documents that were received physically a long time ago before the organisation computerised, and are just occupying office space, can still be scanned and properly archived in a computer system.
When you want to retrieve a file from a huge physical filing cabinet, it might take you forever to find the correct one.
The document might have been misplaced and you may be distracted from your actual work as you hunt for it to no avail.
But when the document is archived in a virtual system, it can be accessed quickly and easily.
Further, many users can access that one document at the same time without even having to move an inch. It will all be happening at the click of a button.
Although you may have to part with some money to acquire the necessary equipment to establish a paperless work environment, the conveniences it brings can justify the necessity.
While completely eliminating paper may not be practical in the work environment, there is scope for many organisations to interrogate their paper usage and find ways of reducing it to a minimum.
Firms in sectors such as accounting and law might need more time to catch up, but it is important for the way we do business to continue to be inspired by modern trends in technology.
The wise words of Comesa Secretary-General Mr Sindiso Ngwenya while launching the paperless system at an inter-governmental committee meeting are worth repeating.
Said Mr Ngwenya, “Indeed, there are some of us who will feel threatened or uncomfortable with the technology. That is to be expected as disruptive technology when introduced has its birth pangs. What is, however, certain as in the case of any virtual application and systems is that once we get used to the systems they become our second nature.”
Later folks!
