Poor pen and paper – everyone wants to kill them off. The latest would-be demise of pen and paper came with the glitzy launch of the iPad. Proponents proclaimed that the iPad (not to mention the inevitable generation of iPad knockoffs to follow) delivers the drop-dead ease-of-use and portability required to replace pen and paper as the dominant form of data collection for field services personnel and other mobile professionals.  Alas, in reality the iPad and its tablet PC brethren are still too expensive, too complicated and too cumbersome to be a viable replacement for most paper-based forms of data collection.

Actually, the ongoing quest to replace pen and paper is misguided. Pen and paper do not need to be replaced – they need to evolve. “Replacement” mandates new technology adoption and new training – both non-starters in the cost-benefit analysis of automating paper-based field-services processes. “Evolution” mandates that the fundamental strengths of pen and paper be preserved – low cost, portability and ease of use – while simultaneously enabling automation.

How can pen and paper evolve? Actually, they already have: with digital pen and paper technology. This technology preserves the fundamental strengths of pen and paper, while delivering the efficiency benefits that come from automated capture, processing, interpretation and transmission of information in real time.

How it Works
Digital pen and paper is exactly what it sounds like – a mobile data capture solution in which the user device behaves like an ordinary pen, but actually “reads” handwriting and translates it into computer-readable code. The image below illustrates the components of the technology:

For enterprises seeking to automate field service and other mobile workers, the benefits of digital pen and paper are striking:

• Highly portable: Since the form factor of the technology is merely a pen, it is easy for workers to travel from location to location with it.

• No training required: Employees don’t need to be taught how to use new applications or hardware. Instead, they are using the same mechanism for data capture they’ve used their whole lives: pen and paper.

• Low cost: Lost or damaged tablets, laptops and mobile devices are a significant source of financial loss and security risk to companies. Digital pen and paper radically reduce these costs and risks.

• No workflow interruption: Workers avoid having to travel to multiple locations to drop off signed work.

These benefits are enabling a growing number of enterprises to effectively address the final frontier of automation – pen-and-paper-based data collection.

Savvy companies understand that the age-old pen and paper approach actually delivers powerful benefits (name another data capture technology that has been proven effective over 7,000 years and requires very little training). With digital pen and paper, companies can evolve this timeless and trusted system into a new era of efficiency that solves their field-service automation challenges. Indeed, reports of the death of pen and paper appear to be grossly premature.

Pietro Parravicini is president and CEO of Anoto.