Paperless Industry?

Sure, the industry will go paperless.  No doubt in my mind.

Let's talk timeframe.  In my lifetime?  Not so sure. 

It isn't a universal wish, by a long shot.  And how will we serve that significant portion of the population that just doesn't want paperless transactions?

Myself, I like holding a deed in my hand.  I don't think I'm alone.

But, someday, for sure.

Depends on your approach, I suppose. I have fallen completely head-over-heels in love with esignatures (i use www.docusign.com in conjunction with www.zipformonline.com), and my clients love it too.  Instead of chasing around signatures and sending the same doc on fax a hundred times til it's illegible, we get initials and signatures in a timely manner.  I know of several agents who are testing out the virtual closing, I'm not there myself yet-guess that would depend on the lender.  Storage of files is easier and less expensive, easier to keep a 'paper' trail when it's computer files.  Not to mention the benefit to the environment.

JMHO. =)

Perhaps in this industry....but the 'world' was going to be a paperless society 10 years ago...what happened?

....everyone started to print out their emails (and associated attachments).  In many , many 'corporate America ' jobs, email overload is taking place.  Emails coming from across the hall to emails coming from around the world.   When I left the electronics manufacturing industry, I was getting 300 emails a day, 1/2 spam....but the other half....... Information, questions, schedules, FYI's, etc.....

...easy at first, just make folders to dump them in........problem is.... a person RARLY goes back to old, FILED emails.....soooooooooo..........they get printed, highlited, left on a desk to review later.

I would imagine we as a country are using MORE paper since the internet, than prior.  Just a guess.

 

Note - you see it in AR pretty often, when someone has a great list or methodology of doing something......a member or two will comment "I just printed that out so I can use it"....

It's all great in concept and believe me, I would LOVE to have less paper to deal with (I love tech toys also) but 10 years ago, when I was in the insurance business, paperless was all the rage and there was a big push to get it done. Well, still to this day, they're FAR from being paperless! Yes, we cut back on some paper here and some file space there but overall, we ended up with more paper trails than before. I'll believe it when I see it!

As someone who has experience computer crashes too frequently- the totally paperless concept scares me to death. I like to keep the old fashion back up in my filing cabinet. I love that email and pdf documents can be done this way..and I DO absolutely see more of that in the future. We use them now and it is wonderful-trimming days off contracts, closings, and eliminating paper mail.  I still find an astonishing number of people are not email capable...

Nothing more annoying than getting an attachment in a format that you cannot open. (Sometimes because the person doesn't have the software, sometimes because of Rev. differences)...however, LOVE 'electronic/soft' communication.

We do as much as possible through email, and with daily back-up - feel pretty good about security/retrieval/disaster recovery of all documents.

If you are not backing up your files... hopefully off-site.....you should be real concerned about a computer crash, etc.

I have made an effort to move towards a paperless environment.  Often times, I have clients that are out of town or out of state, and working electronically seems to be the best at getting my job done!

A further indication that our business is moving towards paperless is the acceptance of Email listing extensions and price changes, etc. with our clients... I love that!

Until we all have wireless tablets and electronic forms with us, though, I think we will continue to kill trees!