What Equipment Should You Use to Perforate Your Business Documents?
Even in our digital age, the average business will find it prints thousands of pages of documents every year. Sometimes this is for legal reasons, with contracts and health and safety forms that need to be signed by hand; sometimes this is a matter of expense, with server space being expensive for a business that has almost all its operations offline, and sometimes this is a matter of security, backing up files held on company servers or in the cloud.
Whatever the reason, paper looks to be here to stay. It is therefore important that you know you have reliable suppliers, and effective technology to look after the paper functions of your company. Over the years, decisions as simple as “what paper perforating equipment should we buy” could save, or lose, your company hundreds or even thousands of pounds.
What do we mean by “perforate”?
Perforating paper is the act of punching a hole through it, to allow it to sit in a binder, hole punched in the correct manner to be compliant with the rest of your office equipment and business documents. Not everywhere uses the same perforating technology – for example, Britain uses two- or four-hole punched paper, while American paper is punched with three holes at the top, middle and bottom. This is important and means you should be careful when ordering equipment made abroad to make sure you are ordering the right size and layout. Otherwise you may end up with a piece of equipment you have paid a lot of money for which does not integrate with any of your other equipment.
What other uses are there for paper preparation equipment?
Perforation is only one of several functions you will want to be able to carry out at your business. Whatever kind of documents you are making, you will want to be sure they can also be slit, cut and creased, to make possible a huge range of opportunities, from glossy marketing brochures, to slick business cards, to nicely bound annual reports. Usually, these competing needs require a host of different machines, most obviously a cutting machine and a creasing machine. However, innovative companies such as Duplo International provide a wide range of slitters, cutters, creasers, and other devices at competitive prices for a premium service.
While it is possible to issue every employee with a hole punch and trust them to perforate their own paper in some companies, above a certain level, the amount of paperwork generated stops this being feasible. It is therefore important to have machines in place that can reliably and consistently perforate each piece of paper that needs it, to save up a huge amount of employee time over the course of the machine’s working life.
Will the COVID-19 crisis effect office paper norms?
The COVID-19 crisis has changed how business is done in the short term around the world. Until a track and trace system is fully implemented, it is unlikely that businesses will be back up to running at full tilt. However, looking ahead, it is true that in many settings, from business cards to brochures, people prefer being able to hold information on paper, so investing now can pay dividends long into the future.
