Why all the requests for paperless billing lately?
Feel like just about every utility, bank, and service company you use is asking you to sign up for their paperless option?
It's not your imagination. And you're about to be inundated with even more requests to opt-in to paperless communications, according to an IDC survey released Thursday.
Ninety-two percent of the 300 U.S. companies in IDC's "Green IT & Sustainability Survey 2009" said getting customers to move from print to online services is a goal they hope to initiate within 12 months.
The survey also shows an increased interest from companies in implementing green practices as a way to take advantage of their growing IT infrastructure. About 46 percent in the new survey said it was the second most important factor driving sustainability practices, compared with 31 percent in a 2008 survey.
The trend is attributed to the budget squeeze being placed on IT managers and their desire to show executives they're maximizing assets, as companies look to save money.
"Because they understand that much of their expanding infrastructure remains underutilized--adding to their company's capital and energy costs--green IT policies can help establish a more comprehensive approach to utilizing their assets," Vernon Turner, senior vice president of IDC's Enterprise Infrastructure, Consumer and Telecom Research, said in a statement.
Saving energy, of course, remains the No. 1 reason companies are adopting sustainability practices with 64 percent of the respondents surveyed citing it as the most important factor in their decisions.
IDC surveyed 1,653 companies in Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Spain, the U.K., and the U.S. That included the 300 surveyed in the U.S. The survey represented a cross-section of industries that included banking, manufacturing, health care, government, and transportation.
In a software-driven world, it's easy to forget about the nuts and bolts. Whether it's cars, robots, personal gadgetry or industrial machines, Candace Lombardi examines the moving parts that keep our world rotating. A journalist who divides her time between the United States and the United Kingdom, Lombardi has written about technology for the sites of The New York Times, CNET, USA Today, MSN, ZDNet, Silicon.com, and GameSpot. E-mail her at candacelombardi@gmail.com. She is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not a current employee of CNET. 
If I sign up, is my bill going to go down proportionally? I doubt it. Like is was said above... for every person that signs up, it just extra profit each month.
Why do companies that push electronic bills think that consumers wont notice that we're now getting less for the same amount of money each month?
Wouldn't you notice?
The reason I don't like paperless statements/billing is that not a single offering (except my web service provider) actually sends me the statements electronically. Instead, I get an email message saying I have 90 days to to login to a web site, access a bunch of menus, then download (and sometimes print) the statement. This is a royal pain-- it typically takes much longer to do all this than to open a paper envelope, read it, and stuff in a shoebox, and if I don't do it within a certain time, I lose it. Also, my bills are paid automatically via credit card or bank transfer, and for some services this is canceled with online billing (I have to login and click to pay).
If companies offered to actually send me the statement itself as an email attachment (or even better as ASCII text), then I would gladly subscribe. They also need to agree to save and make accessible the statements for 7 years-- not 90 days.
One might cite security as a reason to not send statements, but most all email readers can accept signed and encrypted email messages-- it's just waiting to be used.
so why can't you just save your bank statements in PDFs yourself? who said just because you dont get your statements on paper you don't have to manage your own files
i'd be wiling to bet you could even use PDFs instead of paper when the IRS comes to call or whatever
nothing really needs to be on paper anymore unless its an official document like a birth certificate or needs a signature and even a lot of those things can be done digitally now
The whole reason for it to be online is to save the cost of paper, prep, and postage. It doesn't change the needs of the customer who may prefer a file copy instead of an electronic one, or who likes the automatic reminder to pay a bill, or who like having their bill come to them instead of having to log on to an account they don't wan't to retrieve a file.
What is worse is the utilities only seem to keep records for 6 months. How can I see my energy trends over a year? But I guess they do not want me to use less product, do they now.
Lastly, lets stop having the only way to stop getting a paper statement is if we sign up for their account withdrawal plan. My eBank can send payments electronically to them at my bidding. I do not want some company yanking cash out of my accounts, I do not trust them enough for that.
Lets see our Governator fix that!
For more, see my article: "Does paperless billing really save trees?" www.bit.ly/44P571
Another thing rarely mentioned is all the tree farms. If paper is not needed I suspect all that land would quickly be deforested and made into condo's or some other type of use. No way would the land owners take their income properties and let them sit idle as they pay taxes on them.
A counter point is found in this article.
http://www.printingnews.com/print/Printing-News/The-Green-Report--Does-Paperless-Billing-Really-Save-Trees/3$11141
What I want is for email to be improved to the point where my "Paperless statement" can be emailed ot me directly. I don't want to log in, I don't want yet another online account, I just want the same convenience I already have.
That's why I don't switch and the problem companies need to solve. Email me my statement directly using a secure method. Then yes, I'm on board.
What do you do with no paper if they make an error on the bill and you call Joe the CSR that looks at your bill and agrees that a mistake was made and he will give you a $50 credit and here is the confirmation # for you to keep. Now you have no paper to make the note on as to the details he just gave you. In 2 months when the credit has not come thru and you are calling again you have no bill wih the notes to look at.
Sometimes mail from people in my address book ends up in my spam folder. Twice in the last week, people have asked me about emails they sent me that I never received at all. These failures occur on multiple accounts from different providers.
It goes on. I currently cannot send email to anyone @ hotmail.com or live.com from my Yahoo account, which has NEVER been used to send spam. Boom, rejected due to "spam-like characteristics," no appeal, no way around it other than to send mail from a different domain. Hello, M$ just went into a huge joint venture with Yahoo for search, and they're blocking Yahoo Mail?!?!? ***????
I hate to say it but at this point I trust snail mail more than email.
- by xyzmo_SIGNificant November 25, 2009 4:13 AM PST
- We are happy to recognize that according to more and more analysts Green IT is a major Strategic Technology for 2010 and digital signatures (going paperless) become an important part of that. For example in a presentation at the Gartner Symposium ITxpo 2009 in Cannes Gartner analyst David Cearley stated clearly that Green IT means more than energy efficient IT. IT can enable many green initiatives and thus greatly enhance an enterprise?s green credentials. According to Mr. Cearley common green initiatives include the use of e-documents to reduce the consumption of paper for operational and regulatory-compliance-related activities. e-Documents can also serve as the beginning step to facilitate collaboration among geographically disparate parts of the organization.
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(34 Comments)You can read more in the following blog article about how digital signatures contributes to that: http://blog.xyzmo.com/en/blog/2009/08/27/sign-green-with-xyzmo-significant/