Businesses have much to gain by moving to paperless communication with their customers. Just think how much money credit card companies could save if even 5% of their customers switched to paperless communication. The problem is that most companies seem to get the whole idea of “paperless” wrong. Their solution for people who want to be paperless is that they will send you an email notifying you that you have a statement. Then you can log into their website and download the statement as a PDF. This is about equivalent to having a mailman who knocks on your door to tell you there is a letter for you at the post-office.
This reflects a type of arrogance (or stupidity) that is typical of today’s big businesses. It works just fine for customers who don’t do business with other companies. But consider a customer who works with 10 different companies. Every month they have to log in and download statements from all these different companies. It simply does not scale. From the companies’ standpoint, they don’t care about the other companies you interact with and would just as soon have you do business with only them.
The reason businesses are hesitant to send you statements through email is because email is insecure. Theoretically, someone might be able to intercept the traffic and see your email. Of course, people could open your mailbox and take a peek at your phone bill as well, so in practice, it isn’t any less secure than the mail. Sprint seems to recognize this and they are happy to send you bills as PDFs in an email message.
There are ways to make it secure using public/private keys. You give your bank a public key. They encrypt your statement with this key and send it to you. Only your private key (which isn’t shared with anyone else) can decrypt it.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of people using email aren’t using any type of encryption, so a lot of companies don’t even try to design systems that take advantage of secure email communication. For customers, this type of system is ideal. Your bank sends you a statement. It shows up in email and you simply drag it to your electronic file cabinet. The only better way would be for your document repository to talk directly to your bank and fetch the documents without even going through email.
Much of what is holding back paperless communications is a lack of encryption and digital signatures. The technology exists, but it just hasn’t become prevalent enough to make it useful on a wide scale. It is kind of like being one of the first 10 people with a fax machine. Once the novelty wears off and you tire of sending messages to the other 9 people, it doesn’t do you much good. It only becomes really useful when everyone has one.
Part of the problem is that most companies who supply digital signatures are trying to make a profit. This isn’t a bad thing, but they are aimed at other companies who are willing to pay a lot for their services. There aren’t many companies out there who are trying to sell encryption to home users because there isn’t much demand. Of course, until people use it, companies won’t offer it as a way to communicate with customers. So basically, there won’t be any demand until the demand exists–a classic “chicken and the egg” problem.
I think the best solution would be for some type of non-profit company to really start trying to spread encryption in an effort to help make the world more paperless. It could even be a “green” non-profit that is trying to reduce the amount of paper consumed. This wouldn’t be a bad role for the government because it is basic infrastructure for doing business. Of course, they would probably want to keep some type of back door access to read your emails and the results would probably be a bureaucratic nightmare.
What are the roadblocks you see toward adopting paperless practices?
Originally published July 14, 2008.
Hej :-)
First, many thanks for such an excellent site – megamany useful tips/points etc.
Question re E – Ink
Sorry if its a daft question but can one read e-ink written docs on a mac screen?
Re online subscribing v. hardcopy
I’ll focus first on the economics & practical aspects first
I enjoy handling a paper, it doesn’t have a battery that runs out and its easy on the eye. On Sundays its therapy :-)
however …
I subscribe to MANY infojournals (London Times etc) and rely on RSS in order to be able to scan (hopefully absorb) cherry-pick (accept and reject) megamany story feeds
There’s no way I’d have the time or inclination to plough through x number of physical journals (never mind the expense!)
I can clip items in moments for storage in a database e.g. the excellent DevonThink so that I can cross-reference etc. later
the alternative would be scissors, scrapbook file, a ruined manicure – and time!
what kills the e-readers is that they’re SO expensive. ok they fit in the pocket but $ for $ their functionality is megalimited and primitive even.
Books are a no-no. Even books I consider part of me only get reread once every 5 years – so Its more cost effective to lash out a buy a new copy.
Journals and newspapers etc – totally agree e-readers are an excellent medium.
However, most people (like me!) resent paying almost the price of hardcopy for an eversion – so we won’t play.
THE business model is to supply e-readers FREE or at e.g. $50 tied in with a subscription – a subscription which should be calculated at the hardcopy price MINUS the production costs thereof.
Publishers could hook up, informally, to provide x numbers of subscriptions for a set price + an e-reader
The take-up would be ENORMOUS. I feel SO confident I’m willing to volunteer to direct crowd control on opening day! :-) The answer is VOLUME – at current prices only footballers and webmasters can afford these things!
BOTTOM LINE – very VERY few people will cough up $400 for such a basic gadget – hell, for $700 more you get a macbook with so many functions that, function for function, equates an e-reader to be worth $10 if that! (well, its a FORM of logic :-)
PS
i forgot the Green points!
governments should calculate the cost (carbon and financial) of newspaper production PLUS those costs pertaining to disposal of read copies.
i have a feeling it might work out cheaper for all concerned (the individual and the state) if FREE e-readers were supplies to all households with costbenefits split 50 50 between reader and e-reader supplier
I’m shooting from the hip writing this – i.e. haven’t thought it through yet – so any ideas/amendements etc anyone?
thanbks again
J
Hi Mark
The roadblock is simply the mind. I have all the tools in here but I will sometime stash a piece of paper in a drawer. Probably because it’s attractive, well done, well written.
To become paperless is a goal and as such must be worked on with deadlines and record of accomplishments. I got rid of a lateral filing cabinet (four drawers) down to a vertical two drawers. Never felt so good.
@J – Don’t forget that when you buy a book for a Kindle or Sony eReader, you aren’t actually buying the book. You can’t sell it, donate it, pass it on to a friend, etc. You are simply buying the right to read that book on a particular device.
With this in mind, the price seems even higher for ebooks that what it does now.
@Claude – I agree that a significant obstacle to going paperless is our mind. Right now I’m struggling with whether or not I should scan in all my college work and throw out the paper or not. On one hand it makes sense. On the other, there is quite a bit of sentimental attachments to the reams of handwritten music from the years I spent at a university.
Right now my plan is to scan them in and then see if I can bear to part with the paper.
There are other roadblocks and our current infrastructure doesn’t really support secure communication. That is why so much stuff comes on paper already. If we were somehow able to get everyone up and running with encryption I think we’d see much less paper being produced.
Two banks I deal with in India, both offer to “email” me that statement. One of them provides 128-bit encryption. They don’t use public-private key, but they offer “default” password made up of things only you are expected to know.
I have been pissed of for years about the stupid “paperless reminder emails”. How stupid is that!! can I also sign up for emails that tell me that grass is green?
I just want my statements sent to me as a pdf. I want them to be exact replicas of what I would otherwise have received on a paper statement. And I want the pdf to be password protected, preferably with the password that I use to log into the account page in question. Perhaps the password should be a straight combination of the login ID and the password in question to make it stronger.
What’s wrong with that? Enlightened minds please discuss.
This may piss ecofriendly people off, but I am so fed up with the current paperless statement systems that I am not using them until I get what I want. The companies save money when I sign up for paperless, so I am not giving them that privilege until I get my statements as described above.
@Dadigu – I think the biggest problem is that people designing these systems seem to think that their website is much more important than it is to a real consumer. To a real consumer a particular bank website may be one of 10 other sites they use and on the single place they go for all things financial.
I too have switched some bills back to paper based because it is just to inconvenient to handle companies nonsense methods of sending “paperless” updates.
I agree and my mobile company sends every bill by email, its no problem and in fact they slug you $5 a month if you want a paper bill. Three Australia are leading the way with this!
Ereading for hours can be a strain on the eyes, so I prefer my novels and large texts to be in hard copy. However, all journals and news should be epublished only.
I cheated on the scanning – I used my digital camera to photograph ALL the notes from college and uni over the years. Because I photographed in sequence and saved, the pages are automatically numbered. I also did yearbooks and such. Saved a bunch of space on the bookshelves, loads less dust around the place and I can move countries with ease….relatively :)
Great site!
Yeah it is a pain you have to login to get statements. The problem is that the company has to support all their users/clients email encryption just isn’t mainstream enough.
There are other options though, you could write a program that logs onto your banks website downloads the pdf and emails it to you automatically.
@David – Public Key Infrastructure is pretty standard. To get encrypted emails you’d simply have to give them your public key. However a lot of users would probably find it confusing and companies have probably just decided it isn’t worth the support nightmare of trying to explain it to everyone.
Writing a program to download the statements is a good idea, but my banks require either the number from an RSA device or several challenges or picture identification that would be difficult to program around..
@AngelValerie – The digital camera is a good idea if you can hold the camera steady and straight. There are actually book scanners that use two digital cameras and automatically turn the page, snap two photos, turn the page, snap two photos.
What are the roadblocks you see toward adopting paperless practices?
Government’s policy. In my country they regard hardcopy/printed receipt etc as a (the only) valid transaction record. It’s stupid but there’s nothing we can do much.