Is the answer to "when?" for most businesses. Few businesses will be ready to go even "paperlite" any time soon. I would estimate a majority of businesses will be paperlite no earlier than 2018. There are (at least) 3 cost considerations for switching to paperless for most organizations and every business has to consider 1, 2, or 3 of them (the CIOs said in many words what I will distill to just a few).
Culture - some people LOVE paper. On my team of 3, I do almost everything virtual, printing (at most) 2 pages per day. On the other end, one of my teammates goes through about a ream of paper every two weeks (sometimes faster). The "Luddites" in love with paper will slow things down when they are the ones at the top making decisions.
Audit - Auditors love their "paper trails" - Some of them literally. Some businesses - like healthcare and other stringently regulated groups - will need to satisfy the regulators also.
Customers - Businesses that want to go paperless but have customers that are lagging behind will be constrained by their customer's willingness to change their business practices.
The availability of electronic document portability solutions (tablets, smartphones, etc) has NOTHING to do with any of those three factors. They only make it easier for people like me, those who don't WANT file cabinets full of trees, to accomplish the paperless goal.
Some of the CIO arguments were specious: The "ability to scribble" on paper is possible on e-documents too. "Electronic signing" solution availability is currently available too - it is built into Acrobat and other products. Arguments like this indicate **to me** people who are personally fighting AGAINST going paperless - if they don't know that those technical problems already have answers, they have not looked into the issue.
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