When we talk about going paperless, it’s often in conjunction with things such as saving money, saving the environment or even saving your business. However, it’s easy to exaggerate those claims to a point that they start to become fiction, not fact. Just because a single business goes paperless, that doesn’t mean you’re going to prevent a tree from being cut down in a rainforest on the other side of the world. All it means is that your paper supplier is going to get one less purchase from you. There are echoing effects, yes, but practically speaking your decision to buy less paper will only pile up stock, not save the world.
Sure, as more businesses catch on to the trend of going paperless, then suppliers are going to be demanding less and manufacturers are going to be cutting down fewer trees. However, it takes a global effort in order to make such a drastic change, and if every human being on the planet was so concerned about the environment then we wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place. Let’s face it, people will only go paperless if it gives them some kind of advantage in their field, which is exactly what this article will be talking about.
Saving Time
Trees might not be among the things you can save if you go paperless, but time is. An efficient business usually results in a productive business, that’s a given. Bottlenecks in business usually stem from slow systems that can pile up and create a backlog. Information that is lost or damaged can also great bottlenecks within a business. For instance, if some sensitive data is printed onto a sheet of paper which is then neglected and torn, it can create issues with processing that data.
Saving Money
It is estimated that the average office worker uses about 45 sheets of paper a day. In a paperless office, the number can be reduced to just 16. That’s still a considerable amount of paper for an office that boasts being paperless, but it’s a drastic reduction and in an office with hundreds of employees, that amounts to a lot of money. Going paperless might not save a dying company (that’s an unrealistic expectation) but it can certainly reduce startup and maintenance costs across the board. It can be hard trying to determine how much money you actually save by going paperless, but there are managed print services that will help you determine where you could save money. They will also be able to tell you what parts of your business can afford to be automated with digital systems, thus saving time, money and a lot of future headaches.
Saving Space
Paper takes up a lot of physical space both in a storage cabinet where it is kept and on the desks of office workers. Unless you’re working on physical marketing, chances are there is too much paper on your desks and you could clear it up so that each employee can be more productive. This reduces clutter in the office to create a cleaner working environment and it also makes buying office equipment and furniture a lot cheaper.
