Remember the US style dispatcher is purely a north american thing as far as i'm aware. The rest of us doesn't have that luxury. However centralized load control is a normal thing within many airlines, loading will try to put the CG as far back as possible to save fuel within commercial constraints.
We used to use paper forms a long time ago, then switched to EFB (electronic flight bag) W&B which was integrated into the performance calculation suite so there was no possibility of wrong inputs into the performance calculation (although there was in the weight and balance part), nowadays it is centralized load control and load and trim information is sent via ACARS into the flight deck. In the future (next one to two years) it will go via wireless network (WLAN or cellphone) or SATCOM directly into the EFB which is interconnected with the aircraft systems.
There have been accidents caused by weight and balance errors and there is one big issue still since airlines use standard weights for passengers which are usually on the low side (at least in most western countries). Then there is the issue of number fumbles with performance calculations which has lead to accidents in the past and will lead to more in the coming years.