The end of paper (but can I have my warranty printed please?)

For some 40 years the end for paper records has been judged to be imminent and of course so much of what we now do is handled electronically. However, if we just consider retail for a moment, some 11.2 billion receipts are printed in the UK each year! In theory, these don’t need to be kept, let alone printed. They could be emailed. Yet, interestingly, many of us do keep paper receipts as a proof of purchase; to claim back on expenses, for our financial records or just by way of habit. In the US there is research to suggest that the majority of consumers prefer to keep the paper receipt whilst in the UK, most retailers offer paper receipts there is a clear generational shift towards digital.

The good thing about receipts is that we don’t need to keep them and we don’t need to sign them. Warranties are a different matter. The consumer may well want to read the details and have the reassurance of physically filing the document. A warranty may well be needed months or even years into the future – so it needs to be retrievable. Extended warranties may require a signature and some of us like that to be printed and signed with a pen even if a digital option is available.

Just think what this means for the retailer! Your local electrical store or garden centre has to keep that piece of paper and be able to retrieve it at some point in the future, for example, in the event of a warranty claim. This is why the economy needs digitaisation of paper – and that’s before we get onto areas where paper still predominates, for example, pharmacy and health and to some extent, financial services.

What do we mean by digitisation of paper? In short, we mean the process by which a paper record is turned into a digital image. The required data is extracted from that image to create a useful record of the transaction that can then be stored at much reduced cost and made searchable for when it is needed. Usually, the process will involve the destruction of the paper record.

What does this look like?

If you need to prove your compliance, save paper storage costs and save trees, have your paper documents digitised by a proven ISO 27001 compliant partner that processes millions of documents each year for our customers and has supported leading UK companies with document digitisation for two decades – talk to Celaton.