Benefits of becoming a paperless office

Have you ever heard someone use the word paper to describe a fast process? No? This is because paper-based processes are slow, tedious, inefficient, and prone to errors. Becoming a paperless office (a work environment that chooses to not store or use paper) has a number of benefits.  If you haven’t considered becoming paperless, here a few reasons for you to start.

Infographic – Benefits of a Paperless Office

Happier Staff

Employee engagement is crucial for the success of your business. Tasks associated with paper-based processes such as data entry can be quite mundane. This can make the staff feel like there is a lack of interesting work. As a result, they become less engaged and non-productive. Automating your processes provides the opportunity to work on more challenging tasks. This would increase employee engagement which will result in happier staff.

Save the Trees

Did you know that the average worker goes through 10,000 sheets of paper per year?  Thousands of acres in the forests are cut down every year to supply our need for paper.  This doesn’t include the water, oil, and landfill, used to make the paper, and the air pollutants created from this process.  Reducing your paper usage in the office will have a direct impact on the environment.

10,000 sheets of paper are equal to 1 tree, and 6 trees can offset the carbon dioxide emission from an average car. Although this does not seem like a lot, a little effort from everyone can result in a big change.

Better Customer Service

By automating the mundane tasks, you free up employees to do more important, meaningful tasks. Your staff can focus on improving the customer experience resulting in more human interaction and better customer service.

Audit Trail

Storing data digitally allows you to track updates and see who has accessed data. This allows for more accountability and ensures that your business is compliant with the applicable government regulations.

Making things easier

When a document is in a digital form, the data can be used to create reports. This can help with your forecasting. Even simple tasks such as searching through or forwarding data are much simpler and can be done with the click of a button. In fact, stats show that the average time spent to retrieve information from a searchable PDF is 2 seconds. Compare that to a paper-based file which clocks in at 18 minutes.

Flexibility

Storing your data in the cloud, allows you to access from anywhere at any time. This means you can provide flexibility for employees who want to work from home. Allowing staff to work from home provides the opportunity to save on commercial real estate rent.

Security

Paper documents are susceptible to damage from water, fire, and other natural disasters. Backing up paper is unrealistic and any damage to the original document means that your data is lost.  It is also very easy to access paper documents. There is no way of determining whether your data was compromised. There is also no way to see who last accessed the document or what changes they made.

Save Time & Money

Research shows that employees spend 6 weeks a year searching for documents. This is a huge amount of money to waste on labour. According to learn.ademero, a paperless office saves:

• $3,230 a year on ink and toner
• $5,600 a year on energy
• $300 worth of commercial real estate for each filing cabinet
• $20 in labour for each document filed
• $120 in labour searching for each misfiled document

Setting up the systems to become a paperless office doesn’t have to be expensive. Our ready-to-go solutions can have you up and running very quickly. We can also create a customised solution if our ready-to-go solutions are not suitable. We make sure we get to know your business and the requirements before suggesting a solution to ensure that you get an ROI and the solution works for you, your staff, and your clients.