The following statistics from a Coopers & Lybrand Document Management study may surprise you:

-          Of all the pages that get handled each day in the average office, 90 percent are merely shuffled.

-          The average document gets copied 19 times.

-          Companies spend $20 in labor to file a document, $120 in labor to find a misfiled document, and $220 in labor to reproduce a lost document.

-          7.5 percent of all documents get lost, 3 percent of the remainder get misfiled.

-          Professionals spend 5-15 percent of their time reading information, but up to 50 percent are looking for it.

-          There are over 4 trillion paper documents in the U.S. alone – growing at a rate of 22 percent per year.

OK, I think a lot about paper. I grew up with paper. I seemingly need to touch paper to actually have brain function. Paper was who I was.

We are taught in school that paper is proof that you did the work. And having piles of paper means you are REALLY getting a lot done…. right?  After all, where would we be if we didn’t have our work evidenced by a couple stacks of paper on our desks, onto which we stare at daily as if some kind of alter to our productivity. Or does having a desk with piles of paper mean the opposite?  Does it mean we are getting less work done?

Personally, I became aware that I spent a lot of time looking at and handling my documents with no specific purpose. I would come into the office in the morning and look at them. Sure, I would take note of what they were (at least the top sheet), but then I would go about my day’s work, which usually had nothing to do with those stacks of paper. Then I would move the stacks during the day to make working room on my desk, all the while making sure to keep them in the correct order (whatever thatwas). Then, when I left for the day I would move them back into their proper placement directly in front of my keyboard (perfectly centered, of course) so that I would be sure not to miss them the next day. As it turned out, this was not such a good habit.

The answer?  The creation of DiVA!  A document management system that can turn an office into a “paperless environment”.

I know what you’re thinking,  “My documents are too important to be ‘managed’ by some cold, emotionless electronic system. I mean, what will happen to them? “ Well, what’s happening to them now? What risk do they pose to you laying out on your desk, with no backup copies to take their place?

By scanning in documents and having them available on multiple devices (desktop,laptop, iPad, iPhone/Android mobile device etc.) documents are safer and easier to find. Your documents are with you, whenever you need them, wherever you are!

As Albert Einstein said, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

Having less paper on our desks makes us more productive during our work day.  Using more mobile devices, gives us better access to our documents and also helps us not stress about finding those notes that you took two weeks ago that are at the bottom of one of your organized piles. You can back them up. You can access them in a matter of seconds.

So the question is….. how much time have you spent handing paper today?