Around 80% of businesses say they aim to reduce their use of paper in the future.
Why?
Because going paperless comes with multiple operational and economic advantages, including budget improvement and higher work efficacy.
In this article, we will discuss the benefits of a paperless office, look into five paperless office solutions and explain how doForms can help you establish an efficient and productive workflow that saves time and money.
Table of Contents
What Are The Benefits Of A Paperless Office?
Research suggests that employees, on average, lose up to 40% of their working hours looking for paper files. As a result, misfiled documentation costs businesses four weeks of work annually.
Not only can paperwork introduce productivity challenges, it also results in plenty of unnecessary waste: 50% of all printed papers end up discarded every day, while 20% of printed material is never retrieved from printers due to paper jam or other malfunctions.
The main reasons why small-to-mid-size businesses and large enterprizes want to create office environments that that rely less on paper include:
- Reducing waste
- Minimizing inefficiencies
- Cutting down total expenses
Some of the key benefits of a paperless office include:
- Cost savings: Printing supplies like paper and ink can stack up considerably. Going paperless saves about $80 per employee on a yearly basis. Also, filing and retrieving a paper document costs about $20 in storage space and causes employee unproductivity.
- Organized working environment: A working space that is not cluttered with paper and storage results in better efficiency and productivity and is a more pleasant environment, which increases workers’ satisfaction.
- Better efficiency: A digital or cloud file storage and sharing system helps employees find necessary documentation much faster.
- Less storage space: It is estimated that over 50% of office space goes to file storage. A paperless office with digitized files ensures that your business can use twice as much space more efficiently.
- Safer document keeping: Since electronic files are saved digitally and can be uploaded to a cloud drive, they can’t be destroyed by fires, floods or other catastrophic events. These large paper data loss incidents can, potentially, shut down up to 40% of businesses!
Find out how much paper is costing your business HERE.
Going Paperless In The Office With doForms
doForms is a one-stop-shop for all your paperless office and business digitization needs.
Our configurability and scalability make us a reliable and efficient data collection and transfer partner that turns all your paper data into electronic files.
With doForms’ mobile form solutions, you can capture and manipulate electronic data digitally in real-time and:
- Manage workflow, collect, save and store data online
- Manage employee tasks and send work orders
- Report automatically based on analyzed information
Specifically, doForms paperless forms:
- Send data back to the office automatically
- Email digital receipts to customers
- Calculate prices and quantity in-form
- Capture e-signatures
- Scan barcodes
- Add documentation time stamps
- Benefit your budget
Our forms seamlessly integrate with all major third-party applications and industry-standard software that improves your operational productivity, including:
- ProPay
- SalesForce
- Geotab
- Evernote
- GoogleDrive
- Dropbox
- Microsoft Excel
- Microsoft Word
To learn more about doForms’ paperless and end-to-end business capabilities, watch the video below.
5 Paperless Office Solutions To Keep Your Work Well-Organized And Efficient
Let’s look into five paperless office solutions that can bring the above advantages to your business.
1. Use Instant Messaging & Cloud-Sharing To Reduce The Amount Of Printed Documents
Companies of all sizes and in all industries are increasingly using tools that enable employees to communicate digitally in real-time. Apps such as Microsoft Teams, Slack and Skype For Business are becoming a staple of modern workplace organization.
“Traditional” instant messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp also allow employees to communicate easily from any place.
These apps and tools allow quick and seamless file-sharing, enabling the immediate transfer of digital documents regardless of the distance between the sender and receiver.
Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive and Dropbox are cloud file-sharing systems that replace physical storage spaces by storing digital documents online. They can be accessed by anyone who has access to their location, from anywhere in the world.
The speed and immediacy of these apps boost productivity and efficiency across working organizations. They also eliminate the need for paper reports, memos and other documents that take up extra space.
2. Use Note-Taking And Sharing Apps
Another frequent source of workplace paper-clutter: Post-it notes and other paper pads.
Writing down important information is the surest way not to lose it and it helps people’s memory retention, but digitizing note-taking is an efficient way to maintain these benefits.
There are plenty of laptop, tablet or smartphone apps for note-taking and sharing on the market that meet any business’ needs.
3. Utilize Electronic Billing And Digital Receipts
You can send electronic bills to your Accounts department to make payments online. This eliminates the paperwork untidiness and the inconvenience of writing bills by hand.
Providing digital receipts to customers should also be a part of your digitization process. Switching to this electronic method is a simple way to keep your payment records, without paper waste and clutter.
Discover our mobile form features. Try doForms for free!
4. Replace Printed Roadmaps With Task And Project Management Apps
Most employees manage daily projects and tasks, with the help of a documented roadmap of some sort from the company.
The documentation of process and task management can be digitized and performed online.
Your business’s procedures can be kept within an online intranet system where all employees can find them and refer to them at any time.
Employees can keep their daily task progress and deliverables using some of the project and task management apps such as Microsoft Teamwork, Monday, Trello and Asana.
These apps let team managers allocate and delegate responsibilities. Employees can keep track of them on multiple platforms and devices.
Business processes and task management apps effectively replace physical to-do lists, Post-its and other papers and are reachable at all times, from all places.
5. Employ Digital Agreements And E-Signatures
Digital agreements with e-signatures are a convenient replacement for printed legal documents.
Software like Adobe Sign and DocuSign digitizes these vital agreements, which also expedites the process of signing and sharing documents for clients while eliminating the use of paper.
You can pair digital e-Signature tools with online file management and cloud storage systems like GoogleDrive and OneDrive to allow relevant parties to have access to them and protect their confidentiality.
How To Transition Your Business To A Paperless Office
We have outlined the benefits of a paperless office, discussed ideas and solutions and defined the role doForms has in streamlining your work digitization.
At this point, it is important to develop your internal strategy and business plan for going paperless.
First, define your goals, which may include some of the following:
- Productivity increase
- Efficient document management
- Lowering office supplies expense
- Better customer service
Next, give each goal a priority level. For example, you may want to improve your customer service workflow first, in which case you should focus on providing quicker digital storage access to employees to improve documentation delivery times.
To understand your current paperwork processes and identify areas for improvement, assess the workflow of each department. This is the groundwork for the following three steps in transitioning to a paperless office.
1. Paperless Strategy
The paperless strategy you will implement depends on your unique goals, business model, market and industry. Your employees need to fully commit to paperless processes to make them work, so take their workflow and work habits into account when considering this strategy.
After defining your goals and assessing your current workflow, decide on the kinds of changes you wish to implement. This may include shifting to project or file management software, transitioning to electronic billing, or anything in between.
2. Paperless Policy
In order to commit your entire workforce to follow the paperless strategy, consider endorsing participation from employees. Implement a paperless policy and make it available digitally so they can follow it and contribute to it easily.
This policy should outline the purpose and commitment of the company’s transition to paperless without listing the actual processes, but explaining the company’s stance on the most important aspects of paperless office.
3. Paperless Workflow
This is a vital aspect of planning and initiating new paperless processes.
Assess your current workflow, make changes where needed, then document the process. Think of your paperless workflow as a living document that you can adapt and revise to make improvements. A workflow document also helps employees realize their role and duties in a paperless environment.
Paperless Office Takeaways
Going paperless in the office improves employee productivity, cuts down unnecessary expenses, reduces clutter, frees up storage space and accelerates your processes.
It also adheres to ecological measures by helping companies embrace a more sustainable mode of working.
doForms’ mobile forms help you convert all your paperwork into a paperless office business by:
- Converting, collecting and storing all of your data online on a cloud
- Sending data back to the office
- Emailing electronic bills and digital receipts
- Capturing e-signatures
- Managing employee tasks electronically
