November 4, 2016 is celebrated as World Paperless Day, an AIIM (Association of Information and Image Management) initiative that encourages people and businesses to go paper free, and which can be successfully accomplished with the support of a document scanning company. Today marks the one day in a year when organizations and individuals are urged to spend an entire day without using or wasting a single piece of paper. Studies and researches show that with every year the use of paper is reducing considerably and businesses depend more on electronic information. However, organizations are still not able to go completely paperless. Going paperless may seem like a daunting task but with document scanning services, any critical paper-based data can be scanned and preserved in digital form. Paperless movement in your organization can not only save money and time but also ensure the security of data and improve workflow efficiency.
Each year approximately 68 million trees are cut down to produce more than 300 million tons of paper and paper products and paper is considered as the biggest solid waste in landfills in the US. This shows that the environmental impact of paper is largely significant and serious measures have to be taken to ensure that the environment is protected. Use of advanced technology aided services such as bulk document scanning can drastically reduce the dependency on paper.
5 Simple Ways to Go Paperless
A quick shift from a paper-based office to a paperless one may be difficult. But the following steps can make the transition easier.
- A sudden shift to a paperless office and cutting down on paper use can affect the workflow in your company. So find out the areas where there is no paper work involved and reduce the departmental paper use overall by a certain percentage each month.
- Store all official data in digital form and keep a backup of all critical data. Archiving office data in digital from helps easy and quick internal reviews and external audits. Backing up important data on computers, external storage devices or in cloud storage enables quick retrieval of data.
- Business organizations have to deal with a lot of transactions that involve considerable paperwork like sending cheques or printing purchase orders. Consider e-commerce transaction such as online payment or direct deposits that are much faster and easier.
- Develop the habit of using emails or instant messaging programs among your employees instead of leaving post-its or memos. Also, try to conduct meetings using Power Point or Google Slides.
- Have a clear idea about what documents need to be digitized first. If there are any documents that need to be printed out like financial statements or formal presentations, encourage your employees to use small fonts or print on both sides and minimize the use of paper.
Here are some major benefits of going paperless.
- Easy access to data: Digital files can be easily accessed; even a word written on the documents can be easily searched and found. Daily tasks become simple when your documents are digitized.
- Security ensured: Digital files can be made secure and access allowed only to authorized personnel. Moreover, there is no risk of accidentally shredding an important document.
- Reduce storage and retrieval costs: When active records are digitized, you can benefit from reduced storage and retrieval costs.
- More office space: With electronic files, you don’t need bulky filing cabinets and space for these cabinets. You can put the available space to more constructive use, say, make space for revenue-generating employees so that you have a motivated team to ensure high productivity.
World Paper Free Day is a very good initiative that can set people think seriously about how they generate and use information. It will persuade people to think of more constructive and resourceful ways of managing business processes, such as utilizing data conversion services or outsourcing data entry – strategies that help cut down paper use, save costs while also ensuring greater employee satisfaction and organizational efficiency.
