'Paperless' Is More Complicated Than It Seems

A recent blog posted by Michael Brown on MSPmentor highlighted Canvas, a platform and application that allow companies to create and share mobile forms as an alternative to using paper. The implications of Canvas, Brown suggests, are clear: The paperless office, dreamed of for so long yet ever elusive, may soon become a reality, thanks to Canvas’ tools.

Interestingly, Brown’s blog focuses little on the advantages of a paperless office, though anyone even vaguely interested in the topic can recognize the main benefit of making every document digital. That multiple people can easily collaborate on a single document on whichever device they have with them is a powerful motivation for digitizing the office.

But simply scanning business documents into the computer and calling it a day isn’t enough. Small and midsize businesses need a business-grade file sync solution to ensure employees can access important data wherever they are and share it with others. While consumer-grade file sync solutions, such as the free editions of Dropbox and OneDrive, have proved wildly popular with millions of consumers, they lack the administrative control and security features companies need to safeguard their sensitive information. Business-grade solutions, such as eFolder Anchor, give SMBs the peace of mind that their digital data is secure and private.

Even file sync isn’t enough to ensure that businesses realize the full potential of the paperless office. One factor that explains why so many businesses have been hesitant to embrace the paperless future is the belief that paper is inherently secure. Save for a raging fire (or a shredder), few things can destroy paper.

The same, unfortunately, isn’t true for cloud data that isn’t securely backed up. Whether SMBs store important information in Google Apps, Office 365, Salesforce or Box, one accidental or malicious click could destroy critical data–and if this data isn’t backed up by a cloud-to-cloud backup service like eFolder Cloudfinder, data deletion could be irrecoverable.

In short, small and midsize businesses aiming to go paperless may find doing so a bigger challenge than they initially envisioned. With the right data integrity tools at their disposal, though, SMBs can successfully leverage all the advantages of the paperless office and achieve impressive productivity gains in the future.

eFolder offers its suite of products, including Anchor and Cloudfinder, to MSPs and VARs looking to provide their clients with sync and collaboration solutions, along with comprehensive data protection. From backup and file sync to searching and restoring data across multiple cloud services, eFolder helps partners meet a range of different client information security needs. Find out more at www.efolder.net.

Neeraj Periwal is marketing coordinator, eFolder.