What are the Benefits of a Paperless Office?
In most discussions regarding paperless offices, it’s mainly the environmental benefits that makes the headline.
However, there are other benefits directly in favor of the company in which decides to go paperless to consider. Most notably, there is an increased sense of security that comes from relying on a paperless system.
How Does an Office “Go Paperless”?
The simplest definition of going paperless is when a company chooses to either fully or near fully switch from using physical copies of documents to electronically formatted or digital copies of documents. The biggest benefit for companies is the added security that comes from such document storage. While headlines of recent days may have many under the impression that large corporations fall victim to business identity theft through digital hackers, most of such data breaches and theft is often due to physical copies of documents falling into the wrong hands.
Why Should Companies Consider a Paperless System?
Positive benefits come quickly for companies that decide to make the switch to paperless. The first thing most companies notice is how much more efficiently they can run operations with digital filing systems along with the minimized risk of breaches that come with lost papers. Of course, the lack of paper waste and benefits for the environment are also notable.
Further, by having a digital management system, the office will become much more productive. By removing the need to search through physical documents and instead searching through a database, a lot of time is saved. These databases are created by scanning and transferring documents into a management system, tailored to your specific business. This means documents can be categorized and organized to the specifications that make the most sense for your operations.
Money is also a big motivator for offices considering the switch. In fact, using paper products creates cost more quickly than many realize. In addition to purchasing the actual paper goods, ink, toner, printer and maintaining the printer, the documents will also take up important space real estate in an office, which is a cost in itself. Further, there is time spent filing, locating and indexing the documents, which also costs the company money.