Although paperless organizations are nothing new, it is still phenomenal to read about one of the companies which instigated and succesfully demonstrated this capacity before so many others:
"VeriFone, a leading manufacturer of credit verification systems, is well known for its virtual organization. The company was founded in 1981 by an entrepreneur who hated bureaucracy. By 1990, it was the leading company for transaction automation with products and services used in more than 80 countries. VeriFone's office building in northern California houses a nominal corporate headquarters. In several plants around the world, its processing systems are actually made, and its distribution centers facilitate rapid delivery to customers. most corporate functions however, occur at multiple global locations, including Texas, Hawaii, India and Taiwan. The company seeks to put its people in close proximity to customers and emerging markets, which results in about a third of the employees traveling roughly half of the time. This strategy gives VeriFone first-hand information about business opportunities and competitive situations worldwide.
At the heart of the company culture is constant and reliable sharing of information. It is a culture that thrives on the chief executive officers ban on secretaries and paper correspondence. Everyday the chief information officer (CIO) gathers yesterday's results and measures them against the company's plans. Systems post travel itineraries of everyone in the company and track which people speak what languages. Using IS for simulation and analysis, the CIO pulls together information from databases around the company for an e-mail newsletter to everyone in the company." (From Pearlson & Saunders; Managing & Using Information Systems: A Strategic Approach, 3rd ed. 2006)
In contrast, the public-sector organization I work for employs hundreds of secretaries and thrives on paper correspondence. We still use bucketloads of manilla file folders. Manilla file folders. Our departmental database systems don't connect automatically to our ERP. Key business process information is still stored in large part, in the minds of individual employees. Reading about progressive organizations like this is both astounding, especially considering that we are in the year 2006, and there are still organizations that use outdated 1960-style business processes.
While some companies use electronic, online calendars facilitated by any number of applications (Microsoft Outlook, CorporateTime, Google Calendar...) we still print out paper copies of the week's goings-on and distribute them by hand to each staff member. If 6 changes are made to this document, 6 seperate batches of calendars are printed out and distributed. Arguably, this single organization kills more trees than some small countries.
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