Too much paper

I work as an intern in the dance department of a talent agency in Hollywood... This experience has been a great one thus far and one I feel lucky to have. Just one question, why must there be SO much paper everywhere!? Between filing commission invoices, sorting check authorization forms and going through over a thousand files looking for updated and outdated contracts I'm constantly getting paper cuts.

I understand that certain legal documents need to be in paper format to be valid, but I don't see why the important details on those papers aren't also recorded in a central database, made readily available to everyone in the office (and other national branches of the company for that matter) with a click of the mouse. Why should I need to spend two days of my life going through files to see who needs to update their contract? Now, I swear the point of this post is not to vent about my inefficient tasks at my internship.

The point of this entry is to reflect on how immensely the dance industry as a whole can stand to gain if it becomes more a part of the digital age. So much time is wasted flipping through papers for the correct document or profile instead of simply pressing Ctrl-F to quickly filter through all the data to find relevant information. The sad thing about this situation is that it is not isolated to the company I work at or the particular task of sorting out which clients need to resign contracts. This is an industry wide problem that makes the dance world less accessible, less efficient, and ultimately less profitable. The problem with becoming ditigized is that its not the industry standard.

Someone (in power) should take it upon themselves to get an IT person, go through a training process, and learn how to use all the present-day technological advancements to gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace. It's common belief that all LA-based dance agencies all do the same thing. By the way, those top agencies are: Bloc, Clear Talent Group, DDO Artist Agency, and MSA. See for yourself how they indeed do the same thing with no apparent competitive advantages. For starters let's take a quick look at their home pages:

Perhaps this digital revolution should start with a fully functional clients only portion of an agency's website... Hmm.

Time to go to sleep so that I can rest up for proper research all day tomorrow in my paper-filled world. I'll jot down notes detailing my frustrations on inefficient Post-it notes.