Is the Paperless Office actually possible?

Ah, the question of the day. Can we really ever achieve the paperless office? It is true that every day, more and more offices adopt scanning and document capture applications that move us toward a world with less paper. Below are some key roadblocks:

1. Until paperless technology is pervasive, you will always have paper. Take for example the accounting department that is working with vendor invoices. Until every single vendor is sending digital invoices, you will still have paper to deal with, scan and archive.
   
2. Lawyers love original signatures. Even though many of the courts have become paperless, and will only accept digital copies for court submission, many "old school" attorneys still believe only paper can be legally binding.
   
3. OCR, ICR and OMR technologies are still in their infancy. Until we can have perfect recognition of text, handwriting and marks on paper, folks will always be hesitant to transition. Although there are many free OCR programs, many of the recognition technologies are still out of reach for the small business.
   
4. People. People are just slow to change and adapt to technology. The biggest roadblock is the acceptance of technology, and the ability to accept doing business without paper. Even though document capture applications have come a long way to automate and map to current paper workflows, the notion needs to be accepted by management as well.