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Digital tech fails to replace print

Regina Pazvakavambwa
By Regina Pazvakavambwa
Barcelona, 23 Sept 2015
People still have an emotional connection with paper, says HP's Nikos Dimitriadis.
People still have an emotional connection with paper, says HP's Nikos Dimitriadis.

Despite the proliferation and high adoption of digital technologies such as cloud storage and mobile phones by the enterprise, print continues to be highly used in organisations.

So said to Nikos Dimitriadis, commercial category manager for the Middle East, Mediterranean and Africa region at HP, who noted business processes are still heavily driven by paper. He was speaking yesterday during the HP Innovations Launch Conference in Barcelona.

"Paperless office is still more of wishful thinking rather than reality, as paper remains an integral part of how a business functions and communicates."

In a recent study, IDC found that while many business processes are becoming more digitised, nearly 80% of the time, documents end up being printed.

While some companies have been more successful than others at moving from paper-based to paperless systems, there has not been a case where a company has gone completely digital, said Dimitriadis.

"People still have an emotional connection with paper, and for that to change, the user experience - for example, reading and editing a text on a smartphone or mobile device - has to get better."

Instead of a paperless office, in the future, organisations will use fewer printed documents and store some documents in the cloud, to edit them and use them in their digital format, he noted.

Also, going forward, most companies will adopt a hybrid type of information sharing in the enterprise, said Dimitriadis, adding data will move freely between paper and digital formats.

According to Dimitriadis, for good or bad, organisations still have lots of information they need to print.

"There has been lots of forecasting on how business is going to transition paper out of the office by 2010, and it's 2015 and paper is still being used."

The strong market share of HP LaserJet printers in the Middle East, Mediterranean and Africa region shows use of paper is still strong, said Dimitriadis, adding this suggests paper will continue to be used for some time.