Why filing cabinets are still crucial in a digital/paperless age

We live in a digital age. How many times have you heard this phrase? Chances are, you’ve heard it a lot, but there’s method behind it.

Today, an 8GB USB flash drive will hold 12 million pages of content and fit in the palm of your hand.

A 1TB hard drive will hold over 100 million pages of content and also fit in the palm of your hand.

With cloud services, we can store content online and access it from anywhere in the world.

Twenty years ago, every invoice, memo, brief, note, schedule, to-do list, calendar, and other document was paper-based and stored in a filing cabinet. Today, more businesses are storing these documents locally on servers and computers and on third-party cloud solutions.

The reason for this is simple — going paperless is cost-effective, has a host of accessibility benefits, is considered to be more environmentally-friendly than relying on paper to create and hold data, and it’s also more office-space friendly thanks to no filing cabinets getting in the way.

But, filing cabinets are still crucial in this digital/paperless age. Here’s why:

1. Not everybody has gone paperless

One thing your business cannot control is the policy other businesses have with regard to data. If a customer or a supplier wants to send you paper invoices or other paper documents, who are you to say that you will only accept digital copies?

The fact is, for many businesses going paperless is costly and expensive with no immediate benefit. For this reason, it’s important to consider a filing cabinet because not everybody is on the same page as you.

2. Storing older documents

Depending on how old your business is, you might have paper-based documents that are invaluable to your business that were created prior to the digital revolution.

Whilst you could scan each of these documents to your computer and then recycle the paper version, sometimes this isn’t practical — business information and investor information is always best kept in original paper format. A filing cabinet will let you store these important documents and preserve them.

Above all else, filing cabinets are simply useful to have around in an office environment. Folders can be created and stored which hold employee information, such as questionnaires and annual review papers, and empty drawers can be used to store office equipment.

You can’t put a stapler on the cloud, can you?

To see our full range of filing cabinets and shelving, visit us at http://www.theofficesuppliessupermarket.com/c/office-furniture/furniture/filing-cabinets

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