Benefits of going paperless

If you are considering going paperless in your organization, there’s no better time to do so. In these times of the COVID pandemic being able to work form home and collaborate with your colleagues digitally is priceless. Furthermore, scanning and document management technology has made it easy and cost-effective to convert paper documents into digital files. If you’re still on the fence about going paperless, we’ve highlighted four benefits that may help you make a decision.

Reduced business costs
Less paper means reduced costs for your business. Research has shown that the biggest cost saving when going paperless is achieved through reduction in time spent on searching for, or recreating lost documents. Paper based file retrieval on average costs 86 hour per employee per year! You can do the math yourself!

 Also, when your business is paper-dependent, cases of paper must be purchased and kept on hand at all times. If not purchased outright, printers and photocopiers come with leases and service agreements. Digital information, on the other hand, can be shared without the use of paper, printers, or photocopiers, and multiple individuals in different locations can view and even edit the same document simultaneously.

Moreover, filing cabinets tend to take up a lot of floor space in your office. The square footage they occupy may represent a sizable portion of your office lease costs. Digital records storage allows you to reduce your office space requirements dramatically, reducing lease costs. If you own your office space, floor space previously used for physical storage of documents can be reallocated for revenue-generating business processes.

 Easy information access and sharing
In a paper-based organization, information access depends on where your documents are stored and your proximity to them. If you’re out of the office and need to access a paper document, you either have to drive back to the office to retrieve the file or ask someone to retrieve it for you. The latter may not be a secure option if the document you need contains sensitive or confidential information, and in that case, they may not even be able to access the document you need. But digital files can be accessed from anywhere, at any time, on any device to support your information access needs, if your are appropriately authorized of course.

 Improved operational efficiency
Paper-dependent business processes are slow and error-prone. Inefficient filing and retrieval processes and lost documents can result in issues like:

•Lost productivity

•Employee frustration

•Failure to meet customer expectations

•Privacy-related legal issues

 However, digital documents enable the streamlining of business  processes. These digital workflows greatly speed up servicing your customers. Instead of waiting for days or weeks for a inquiry to be answered, workflows now take minutes or hours. Information access is electronic, enabling:

•Automation of tasks

•Faster invoicing

•Responsive customer service

•Document access control, authorization and tracing

Replacing paper-reliant workflow processes with digital ones helps your organization to be far more efficient. No more clerks needing to drag your binders form one desk or office location to another. No more waiting for someone to return from a vacation to handle a customer case locked away in their drawer. And, customer cases can be redirected automatically to be handed by the employee with the lowest work load.

Optimize Compliance
By going paperless your organization will:

•Minimize the risk of losing critical information

•Have faster access to information to demonstrate compliance

•Create evidence of business activity (for audit purposes)

•Easily comply with audit guidelines and / or legal requirements

Modern Document Management systems can also help your employees complying with the right procedures by using standardized workflows. They can also be configured to require office workers to tick of the necessary boxes of a checklist before they can send the file over digitally to the next officer.

There are many more advantages in going paperless. For more information about diminishing your reliance on paper and going digital, go to our website and download our whitepaper. https://ictual.com/paperless-solution

You will find the advantages explained in detail, an outline of what you can do and three easy steps for implementing a paperless office. You can also learn more about our paperless solution. The state of the art document management system Decos Join.  Ictual would like to support you to ensure that your employees can also work from home or locations other than the office. After all, in this bizarre time and in the digital future: United we stand.

Our leading document management solution Decos Join, enables you to move away from working with paper and start working digital now!