Future Office: The Future of Office Technology

It’s a new year, which means it’s time for new business strategies to keep your small business evolving and always fresh and new. It’s time to develop new ways to keep your desktops clutter-free and create a much more organized office space for more efficiency all around the office.

Meet, “Future Office”.

Remember on The Jetsons, how all of their futuristic household electronics seemed so far-fetched? You were laughing back then, but now we use Skype for video phone calls across the world, electric hybrid cars, the electric Roomba vacuum cleaning robot, a single handheld device used for surfing the Internet, talking on the phone, taking photos, video chat and watching movies — also known as a the iPhone, the Segway transports security cops around the mall with authority and a bit of humor, and there’s the countless wireless electronics that allow us to break free from sitting still.

How is it that as modern technology continues to successfully evolve, using endless amounts of paper in the office is still very slow to progress? Most business owners are still not completely confident in trusting technology to improve their business lives even though their lives outside the office have improved immensely thanks to modern technology.

Future Office technology does not just mean using modern technology, like computers, projectors and printers. It refers to what we are using these modern technological machines for. No one uses a typewriter anymore because it’s not anywhere nearly as advanced as a computer and especially because it uses paper. Yet for some reason, after we type on a computer, we still bother to print the document and pop it in the mailbox or into a fax machine. While technology has evolved, the concept has remained exactly the same. Why on earth are we still printing documents to mail and fax?

The ultimate Future Office would not contain any paper. Every document would be received by e-mail, downloaded from a website, or received by an electronic fax website service. All out-going mail would be e-mailed or electronically faxed using a website service. All magazines, newspapers, bills, checks and invoices would be subscribed to online or delivered directly to your inbox.

If we have computers, then there is no more need for filing cabinets taking up space in your offices. Desk drawers would only contain a small stash of emergency post-it notes, a couple of pens, a pack of gum, and hand sanitizer. Take a look around your desk area right now. Look through your drawers. How many items do you see that exist only for the sole purpose to accommodate the use of paper? A plethora of pens and pencils, tape, stapler, tacks, paperclips, bulletin board, scissors, filing cabinets, binders, highlighters, Sharpies, folders, and envelopes. Now imagine if all of those items disappeared and ask yourself, “Do I even really need any of this stuff if we didn’t use paper?”

I bet a good third of you could go paperless tomorrow (as long as it’s a regular business day). Because you already have a computer and the internet. That’s virtually all you need. Sure you have filing cabinets full of old papers, but the operative word there is “old”; Expired, Obsolete, Ancient, In-the-past. All you need now is a scanner to scan all of your beloved (legal) documents stuffed inside your filing cabinets and load them neatly into digital folders on your hand-dandy computer.