In an age where the ‘paperless office’ is something we’re all supposed to be aspiring to, it might surprise you to hear that paper is still widely used in most businesses.

In fact, as much as 55% of businesses still largely rely on paper.

But does this create a more efficient way of working?

Imposing unnecessary barriers

If you’ve dealt with important processes in your business that are paper-based, you’ll know how hard it can be to access the information you need.

You’ll also know how challenging it is to share that information across the company - particularly if the team is global or outsourced.

Mobility is a huge problem with paper-based processes, too. Half of the UK workforce is expected to work remotely by 2020, and when critical documentation can only be found on paper, the ability to collaborate with remote employees becomes almost impossible.

Paper imposes unnecessary barriers between work processes and the people involved in them. It also creates ‘silo’ systems by placing similar barriers between different functions within the organisation.

At its worst, paper is frustrating to work around and highly inefficient.

The people-to-paper API

The term API (application programming interface) is taken from the world of computing, but can easily be applied to paper processes, too.

This has given rise to the term ‘people-to-paper API’, which refers to the gateway between two digital services that need to work together in order to share information.

A smoother operation will develop from a better API, just as it does in computer programming, but the API between people and paper is unfortunately rarely efficient in business.

So, how can an organisation raise the efficiency of its people-to-paper API?

Disrupting paper

When making the transformation from paper to digital, your business will need to remove paper from its inefficient processes.

Disrupting paper by taking it out of important elements of the business will help you increase the efficiency of your people-to-paper API.

Cloud document management, ‘go-anywhere’ mobile printing and user analytics will help you identify and transform those processes that are currently hampered by paper.

With the right managed print service (MPS) provider in place, you can then digitise these processes. MPS works as a direct connection between processes, documents, information (be it on-site or in the cloud) and users.

In the right hands, you’ll find that MPS is a platform capable of driving innovation and creating a future that is characterised by less paper use and a more efficient, digital way of working.