Moving to an environment-friendly paperless workplace helps you to save money by lowering costs and reducing physical storage requirements. For small businesses and start-ups, it may be easy to transition to digital mode without too many hassles. But for the ideal option for large business organizations to achieve their digitization goals would be opt for outsourcing services. In addition to saving money and promoting workflow efficiency, digitization will make your office an environment-friendly place.
It’s not just businesses that are digitizing. According to a recent report in the FederalTimes, the US Army Headquarters is taking initiatives to go paperless in under a year. Headquarters, Department of the Army (HQDA) had been using paper files to manage all their correspondence. The ongoing project is aimed at digitizing the entire process from the version control and editing of the documents to including digital signatures for the final product. The benefits of this undertaking, according to the report are:
- Eliminates staffing folders and stacks of paper
- Improves efficiency and timeliness of actions being processed
- Eliminates the “personnel walking down the hallways”
- Will ensure real-time feedback on exactly where the document is in the process and who actually has it at that time
- Eliminates a lot of waste, with paper as well as printing out things
- Assures a concise archiving process
- Saving the taxpayer’s and the government’s money
- Improves all round efficiency
When it comes to businesses, there are number of benefits to digital documents, both to your practical, everyday and long-term operations, and even legal obligations. Here are the steps that can help with a well organized transition to a paperless office:
- Digital file sharing: Digitization improves teamwork in an organization. Google Docs, Zoho and Microsoft Office Live are tools that allow files to be shared with your colleagues easily. Good collaboration happens when you can access the essential documents and constantly collect the right information for the right person when it’s needed.
- Cloud storage for easy retrieval and safe storage: Cloud based systems are an efficient and convenient storage for your digital files which help to keep the documents safe. You can access the files from multiple devices with authorized power.
- Promote digital communication: Encourage your team to use digital communication for mailing invoices and payslips. Avoid the use of paper between departments in the same organization.
- Electronic signature: With paper, organizations have to print out documents, get them signed physically and send them back, which can be a very tedious task that also consumes a lot of time and money. Introducing E-signature (electronic signature) in business organization can improve security by ensuring that only the right candidate can access certain documents and systems.
- Train employees to be more digitally savvy: To improve the customer experience and your bottom line, your work force should be proficient in using digital methods to communicate with the consumers. A paperless industry requires some digital know-how to send emails, access cloud storage, etc.
When it comes to bulk document scanning, it is better to outsource the task to a professional document scanning company. An experienced service provider can ensure accurate, efficient and timely digitization solutions.
