Research shows that we never use 80 percent of the information we keep. People's fear of throwing paper away is enormous. I used to have nightmares that after one such event, someone would call with a horror story about something they threw away and later needed. Many companies hold their own file clean-out days, and often they fail miserably. Because management has failed to create criteria, methodology, and tools to enable and empower its employees to make decisions.
Clutter is postponed decisions.
Begin with your company's mission and goals. Only a small portion of the information that exists on paper today is worth converting to a computer-readable format. However, as the quantity of information received and generated by business increases, electronic storage options become more attractive. They can be viewed using a variety of file-viewing tools, such as Adobe's popular Acrobat Reader. Then there's the issue of how to store the files.