Richard AgamaNot all office furniture is sleek, sophisticated, and cutting-edge. Sure, there are the ergonomic chairs, the fancy conference room tables, and the obligatory break room games, but the backbone of many office settings, even to this day, is that spartan set of filing cabinets that stores your physical documents. Unlike more eye-catching modern furniture, filing cabinets are usually a symphony in olive drab, putty-beige, and industrial grey. While they’re not aesthetically pleasing, they’re still a necessary part of your office. Even in a digital landscape, there are some good reasons why you still need your filing cabinets—even if only as a backup.
Tangible Storage Confers Authority
The offices of old visibly and significantly devoted office space to physical document storage. Even if it wasn’t visually appealing, it connoted seriousness and attention to detail that an all-digital milieu can lack. The notion of keeping important materials in paper form isn’t obsolete to your business partners and employees just yet. With that in mind, back up your important documents and keep them on file.
Digitizing Everything May Not Be the Right Move
Having your filing cabinets on display isn’t just a matter of keeping up appearances. It’s often more cost-effective than embarking upon a full-scale digitization effort. One of the better reasons why you still need your filing cabinets is to keep these expenses at bay for the time being. A firm with years and years of physical archives may not have the time and resources on hand to digitize them. When time and money are finite, this wholesale transfer of data can become an extravagance. Just because you can condense a wall’s worth of filing cabinets onto an external hard drive the size of your wallet doesn’t mean it’s the right move. Worried about accumulating paperwork that may become obsolete in the future, as well as getting rid of it? You can simply hire a document shredding company that will dispose of your sensitive information in a discreet and secure way, safeguarding your data as well as saving you money.
The Unreliability of Digital Storage
Whether we’re talking the cloud, conventional hard drives, or solid-state technology, digitization isn’t 100-percent reliable. Fully entrusting technology with your documents is a little like air travel or a nuclear power plant: it’s highly unlikely that something will go wrong, but if it does go wrong, it will go very, very wrong. Even if you do have the wherewithal to make all your data digital, don’t give up on those old filing cabinets just yet. Those physical archives are a necessary defense against severe data loss. As for their dull paint jobs, maybe your art department has a new creative project on its hands.
