Printed material has been the most efficient means of storing and sharing documents since Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1440. Paper documents became even more pervasive when as computer companies like Hewlett Packard made printers affordable enough to be available in every office.
Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos with the new Kindle 2 electronic book
I saw an article recently about Kindle, Amazon.com's electronic book. Newsweek calls it "the iPod of reading". It can download any book from a catalog of 240,000 titles in just 60 seconds. And it can store 1,500 books! Amazon has already sold over 500,000 of the electronic books, and they can't keep up with demand. This trend has enough momentum that I think kids growing up 30 years from now will have to go to a museum to see a printed book.
Paper is still ingrained in our business culture though, and safety departments are one of the heaviest users. I've seen companies that have an administrator in the safety department dedicated to printing, binding and distributing paper
full time. Just think how much paper is generated for policy manuals, procedure binders, Material Safety Data Sheets and the dozens of types of safety forms.
It's hard to imagine now, but I see paper use steadily falling over the next few decades, as more and more companies realize that storing documents online is more reliable, secure and cost effective than paper. This transition will happen sooner in organizations with dispersed workforces; nearly all workers now have (or will soon have) access in the field to a computer (or similar device) and the Internet. With the right software (ie. an online Safety Management System like
SAFETYSYNC), a company will have all it needs to make the move to electronic documents. Solutions that offer the ability to print and sign a document will be the ones that are adopted first, since this practice is still important for due diligence purposes.
Our Form and Recordkeeping components are going to be released soon in Beta for testing. If you're interested in moving some or all of your forms online, give us a call!