Documents are essential in the operations of any company regardless of whether it’s a small business or a multi-national corporation. While different industries rely on different forms and volume of documentation, important business aspects such as invoices, employee paychecks, and email transcriptions are a common thread to any sized business. To manage and better organize documentation, more companies are switching to a paperless office.
However, some business owners are hesitant to make this transition to paperless in large part due to misconceptions, with the two biggest ones being about cost and security. While paperless document management systems and paperless document scanning equipment can be more of a financial investment, the long-term return on that initial investment is far greater.
Cloud storage, though it’s been around for years still has some business owners leery about the security of their documents. However, online document storage is more secure than tangible documents that are stored in filing cabinets. With passwords and access credentials, one can better protect documents stored online.
This secure document scanning and online storage helps better organize your documents and helps you quickly locate documents.
The Advantages of Paperless Offices
Though the initial cost may be a turn-off for some business owners, there are many advantages of paperless offices that outweigh the costs.
Long-Run Cost Savings
Did you know that during the course of a year, your company can fork over thousands of dollars buying paper, ink and other office supplies such as paper clips and staplers? Though they may be a drop in the bucket each time, over the months, those “small” purchases add up.
Imagine the costs multiplied over the multiple years of useful life for a traditional office printer. If your business is in an industry where you do a lot of document scanning, printing and copying, these costs will likely be even higher.
Besides these regular costs, there are costs to repair or replace a printer. The regular, heavy use of office printers eventually take their toll and document scanners, printers and copiers break down. These costs can be significant. Repairs that are too extensive will warrant the necessity of replacing the office equipment, which can incur an even larger expense.
With a paperless office, a business doesn’t have to spend money regularly replacing paper, ink, and toner and the decreased paper use cuts down on the need for paper clips, staplers, and file folders.
Paperless document management systems and document scanning equipment last longer and require fewer repairs as the equipment experiences less wear and tear by not printing, scanning or copying paper.
Better Productivity and Efficiency
Printing hard copy documents, especially a large quantity of documents can take time. If your document scanning, copying, and printing equipment breaks down, your business can come to a halt, or at least a slowdown. Without the ability to produce certain documents, some of your employees will have a hard time doing their jobs and completing tasks.
Within a paperless office, documents can be scanned, copied and shared digitally within a fraction of a second. If the paperless document management system acts up or breaks down, employees, stockholders, board members, and clients can still access the documents online. This keeps the business working efficiently as well as makes employees more productive in their jobs.
Better Security
When an office prints and regularly uses physical paper documents, there needs to be a physical place to store that documentation. File folders inside of file cabinets are the most common way businesses organize and store their paper documents. Storing documents this way not only leads to more disorganization and a harder time to find and locate a specific document, but it also increases the liability of important documents to get lost, damaged or stolen.
When storing documents to the cloud and scanning and sharing documents digitally, the security of your document scanning increases. This is possible through the use of passwords and authentication and encryption software. Paperless document management systems give you the power to assign document access to certain employees. File cabinets, on the other hand, can be easily broken into when no one is in the office or is paying attention.
Paperless document management systems and document scanning may cost more initially, but in the long run, they can lower the long-term operating costs, improve worker productivity and efficiency and make documents more secure. If you want to learn more about how we can help your business cuts costs and run smoother, contact us today.