The Personal Touch: Handwritten Notes Could Improve Business

Though businesses may be wired to the gills these days, our digital devices will never replace handwritten notes, a new study shows. However, the pen we use in the future may be a digital one.

Today's device-centric information workers rely on handwritten notes and believe that better integration of handwritten notes and spoken information with their digital workflow would significantly improve productivity.

While workers and their employers increasingly favor the use of laptops, mobile phones, tablets and other peripherals to manage overall workplace information, an overwhelming majority (87 percent) of business professionals use handwritten notes to complement these technologies, according to a study conducted by Forrester Research for Livescribe, a maker of smartpens. And three out of 10 professionals reviews such notes on a daily basis.

The study also showed a need for technology that brings handwritten and spoken communication into the digital domain; 75 percent of the respondents said they saw value in the ability to computerize, index and search, as well as to share handwritten notes and associated audio. And 47 percent felt that better note-taking would improve both their personal job performance and decision-making within their organizations.

Handwritten notes also help make the world go round, the study found: 37 percent of all workers use handwritten notes to organize their priorities through to-do lists .

"People in all walks of life and at every stage of their education and career find handwriting to be a critical method for recording and processing information," said Byron Connell, the chief marketing officer of Livescribe.

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Reach BusinessNewsDaily senior writer Ned Smith at nsmith@techmedianetwork.com. Follow him on Twitter @nedbsmith.