4 Ways transitioning to a paperless office can drive growth

Paperwork has always been an integral part of doing business. But in the digital age, physical documents are steadily being phased out from many operations. That’s a good thing too, since reliance on paper leads to millions of dollars in waste, which is costly for both your business and the environment. While it might not yet be possible for your business to become completely paperless, it’s one of the end goals that should be driving your digital transformation.

Here are four ways going paperless can help your business grow:

#1. Productivity

As physical paperwork starts piling up, so do the problems. There’s naturally a lot more back and forth when you’re relying on paper documents and correspondence, which means your employees will end up spending more time on repetitive manual processes. This leads to an increased risk in human error as misplaced documents result in more work. Productivity takes a hit, which means customers will suffer too.

Digital documents are far easier to store, manage, and retrieve than anything printed or stored on physical media. Instead of manually searching through filing cabinets full of documents, it’s possible to find documents almost instantly. Even paper documents can be scanned using optical character recognition (OCR) software to make them editable and searchable, which is ideal for businesses transitioning from a paper-heavy environment.

#2. Scalability

It’s always an exciting time when your business is growing and acquiring new customers, but growth can also come with a multitude of challenges. Because paper documents take up so much space, it doesn’t take long before you start running out of filing cabinets and need to spend more on storage. The amount of information being generated by today’s businesses is only going to grow, hence the need to do away with paper and physical storage mediums.

The success of any business depends heavily on its ability to scale with demand. When you have to hire new personnel to handle growing volumes of business information, there comes a point when the company becomes a victim of its own success. To stop costs from outpacing your ability to grow, you need a scalable, cloud-based document management system (DMS).

#3. Mobility

Long gone are the days when office work was restricted to a cubicle desk or a sprawling open-plan office. Employees expect some freedom with regards to when, how, and where they work. Most of the time, they want to use their own devices, rather than learn how to use a new program or computer. Many people also like to work from home or get a head start on the day’s work during the commute.

If paper documents still play a critical role in every major business process, none of the above will be possible. Sure, employees might be able to take printed documents and physical data storage devices home with them, but the amount of back and forth involved, as well as the risk of mislaying something important hardly makes it worthwhile. With a cloud-enabled DMS, you can get your business ready for the mobile workforce and boost employee morale in doing so.

#4. Business continuity

Most businesses never reopen after a disaster. But it doesn’t have to be that way when you can store all your critical business information off-site in multiple locations. It’s often impossible to replace damaged documents. There’s also a risk of physical theft and loss.

Of course, digital mediums are far from foolproof, but they do offer the benefit of coming with many more ways to protect them. The most important thing is redundancy. For example, data stored in the cloud is typically stored in at least three different physical places. With paperless office environments, you can add as many redundancies as you need, protect them beneath multiple layers of security, and have them accessible whenever you need them.

Complete Document Solutions provides the services and expertise you need to make the transition to a paperless office. We offer cutting-edge digital documents, workflow solutions, and cloud services to reduce your reliance on paper. Call us today to learn more.