With so much paperless technology out there and many options in enterprise, at home, or in virtually any setting — will we ever walk around with our iPads in the office and never need to print anything onto paper? According to Chris Knowlton from Mortgage Professional, it certainly is possible, but won’t be happening anytime soon — at least not on a mass scale.
“There are two main things preventing you from going paperless. The first is your employees and the second is your customers. Pushing a paperless process on either of those groups if they are not ready will hurt your production.”
Knowlton points out that he has been having the same discussion about e-signatures and e-mortgages with people for 15 years. The process is happening slowly, but it is possible to be completely paperless, he says.
“Make no mistake, going paperless is entirely possible, you just have to do it slowly (and we sure have that mastered as an industry), and you have to do it on an individual basis. You need to gage the willingness of your employees, especially the sales and processing departments, to use the tools that make a paperless mortgage possible. Understand that you might be working against the muscle memory of a 20-year mortgage sales veteran who will only see this as something that slows them down.”
For most companies and industries, copiers and printers are still the way to go today. Although with tablets taking off, it is possible paper will be less of a necessity. Company heads may have plans drawn up on tablets; and copiers will be used to send these plans to lower-level employees for instance (thus in a smaller scale). Or who knows, everyone could be carrying a tablet and everything will be shown digitally.
