The “paperless office” has been a fantasy of office managers since the advent of the personal computer. While you are probably printing less today than you did 10 years ago, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that the average office worker still uses about 10,000 sheets of paper per year (the numbers for the UK are similar, too). To make a new push for a really paperless office, the “Paperless Coalition,” which includes Google Drive, HelloFax, Manilla, HelloSign, Expensify, Xero and Fujitsu ScanSnap, today announced the launch of a new campaign to get businesses to go paperless to save “time, money and trees.”
The group is led by HelloFax. “The digital tools that are available today blow what we had even five years ago out of the water,” said Joseph Walla, HelloFax founder and CEO in a canned statement yesterday. “For the first time, it’s easy to sign, fax, and store documents without ever printing a piece of paper. It’s finally fast and simple to complete paperwork and expense reports, to manage accounting, pay bills and invoice others. The paperless office is here – we just need to use it.”
Paperless 2013, the coalition says, is a “campaign to remove the need for paper from ‘paperwork.’” Besides saving time, money and trees, all of these companies are also obviously interested in getting new users. In its current incarnation, this group is clearly meant to be complementary and doesn’t include any obvious competitors. While Google Drive is not a bad choice for storing your data online, for example, competitors like Dropbox, SkyDrive, Box or SugarSync offer many of the same features.
If you want to go paperless in 2013, you can take a pledge on paperless2013.org, which will also sign you up for the group’s monthly email newsletter. According to its website, the coalition is also planning “other activities,” but it’s not clear what these will look like.
Image credit: clive darr
HelloFax is an online service that helps you send and receive faxes, request signatures and fill out forms all from your computer.
Manilla is the award-winning free online service that organizes consumers’ bills, finances, reward programs, subscriptions, and more. Manilla organizes and simplifies people’s lives by providing one secure access point to all household accounts and services. The free service helps consumers manage their household accounts, including financial, utilities, subscriptions, daily deals, and travel rewards programs, all through Manilla.com or via the Manilla mobile apps. Under a single password, Manilla gives customers an automated, organized view of all of their account information,...
David Barrett founded Expensify in May 2008; Witold Stankiewicz joined him in August 2008, and together they launched an Alpha product at TechCrunch 50, taking home the “DemoPit 2nd Place” prize. In March 2009, they launched a Beta version and demoed it at FinovateStartup 2009. Expensify’s mission? Help people create expense reports that don’t suck! In May 2009, Expensify raised $1M, hired some additional engineers, and went to Istanbul for a month in order to write the award-winning Salesforce.com...
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