IRIS Blogs

I first went virtually paperless about 15 years or so ago when the first PDAs started to emerge. I used to turn up at meetings with my little device and take my notes on it, which I’d back up to my PC. It meant no stacks of filing systems with papers that I virtually never looked at or when I did, couldn’t find what I was looking for. It was all there, ready to access from my little PDA.

At the end of last year I met up with a friend from Hong Kong who showed me the new Kindle 2, an e-book. Before I saw it, I’d struggled to get my head around the idea of reading a book from an electronic device. I was totally wrong. I’m now the proud owner of a Kindle and am a huge fan. Why?  Ease of use and ease of access. Within 60 seconds, as long as I have access to WiFi, wherever I am in the world, it will deliver books, magazines and newspapers to my wafer thin device which can then hold thousands of publications – a library in your palm

For years, businesses and the professions have talked about the Paperless Office. It is here and here to stay. Let’s face it, we are only going to get more and more mobile and space will only get more costly.

At IRIS, for quite a few years now, we’ve been helping our customers, particularly the accountancy, legal professions, charities and membership organisations, move paperless in every aspect of their business/practice. In most cases, the main obstacles to change are not technological, they are human ones usually, lethargy, fear and unwillingness to change.

So, imagine you are a partner in a professional practice and one of your partners is away. An important client calls up and wants to know the status of his work. How nice to be able to quickly access the practice management system from wherever you are (in the office or mobile), know exactly who is working on the project and other projects for this client, it’s status, access key documents and contact history and at the same time remind the client to pay the bill or that you need to invoice the WIP on the ledger. Next step, to give clients secure access to documents via your website. Why would you not want to do this in a world where service expectations are constantly rising?

We can all be creatures of habit, wary of change, but I hasten to add, the accountancy profession does appear to progressing towards a ‘paperless’ environment much more rapidly than most. We now trust technology to hold information and slowly, we are becoming less likely to print a spare copy for the file. In this case, the accountants are not the laggards, they are at the forefront – maybe they were the first to recognise the cost savings and revenue opportunities!?

One example of this is that E-Filing from IRIS Accountancy Practice Solutions is now a major benefit for our customers with almost 2 million filings to HMRC made last year alone via our software, representing over a third of all those received via the profession.

What’s exciting or frightening you about going paperless?