If you really want your company to be efficient in 2020 and beyond, you’ll need to move toward the strategies that work. Today, one of the best steps you can take is to make your business as paperless as possible.
This cuts down on waste and helps you move toward the digital evolutions that will make your company more productive as a whole.
Below we’ll dive into some paperless office solutions and why they’ll be advantageous to your company.
The Advantages and Necessity of Going Paperless
There are a number of benefits that your company will enjoy when you look toward paperless solutions.
As a society, we create upwards of 300 million tons of solid waste each year. By cutting down on paper waste through recycling and other measures, your company will be more environmentally responsible and productive as a whole.
1. Develop a Cloud System for Storing and Managing Your Documents
One of the best things you can do is look into a cloud system for handling your documents.
The better you manage your files, the easier it’ll be for your company to stay organized and productive. When your documents move to the cloud, you’ll be able to collaborate on them as a team and move them forward without worrying about physical files, scans, and other tasks.
The benefit of moving to the cloud is that the storage potential is infinite, so your office will become immensely less cluttered. You’ll improve productivity by having a cloud-based document management process that your company can lean on.
2. Make use of eForms
As you move forward with your business, switching to eForms can be just what you need. This is green friendly and comes with a host of benefits for both your customers and the company as a whole.
You’ll be able to give your customers more options with the forms that you create. Today’s consumer actually prefers eForms, so you’ll be better able to cater to them.
What’s more, using eForms saves lots of time and money, you’ll be able to access the document across multiple devices, and will have virtually unlimited storage for your forms. They can be easily created and altered as well, so you can make changes on the fly as needed.
3. Make Use of Digital Note Software
The notes we take add up and create more clutter than you could imagine.
Instead of notebooks and notepads, encourage your company to begin using digital note-taking software. Whether you look into cloud-based platforms like Evernote and Google Docs or create your own internal system for note-taking and strategizing, it’ll go a long way toward helping you prevent waste.
Digital note-taking is often more effective also, because it’s easy to jot notes in a physical notepad and later lose it or not be able to read the handwriting. Even if you do neatly maintain all notebooks, they will create piles of clutter in your office that makes it harder to get around and stay organized.
With digital note-taking software, you won’t have to keep up with these individual notepads because they are archived forever in the cloud until you decide to delete them. You can also tag collaborators on your digital notebooks so that you can improve your workflow and have access to the same information at the same time.
What’s more, digital note-taking software also lets you add documents, photos, voice notes and so much more.
4. Add Tech to Your Meetings
The more high-tech you make your meetings, the more paperless they’ll be.
When you are able to go live on video and record the entire meeting, you cut down on the amount of physical notes that people will have to take. What’s more, you can create digital notes right alongside the meeting that people can reference later.
This does away with the need to pass out memos that are bulky and expensive to print. These memos often find their way into the trash bin or recycling bin eventually anyway, while digital meeting notes can live forever.
5. Incorporate E-Signatures Whenever Possible
You can cut down on paper waste when you digitize the contracts that you do with your business partners.
E-Signatures are perfectly legal and don’t require the printing, scanning and shipping that you’d deal with when physically signing documents. Making use of e-signatures is also more productive because it significantly eliminates barriers of time that prevent deals from going through.
Your contract will become legally binding instantaneously, which keeps you more productive while also reducing paper waste.
6. Scan Your Historical Paper Files
A quality scanning process will be necessary for keeping your company paperless.
Hardcopies of documents create a lot of the clutter and waste in businesses of all industries. If you fail to make your important documents digital, your employees will have to keep printing copies for their records whenever they don’t have the original.
By scanning your files and managing them digitally, your team will be able to access the documents they need, anytime, anywhere, and from any device.
7. Switch to a Digital Mailroom
Finally, make sure that your company is getting a handle on its mail as well. With Digital Mailroom, you can turn your snail mail into a cloud-based process, making it seamless and giving you more options.
After you set up this service, your mail will be routed to a company that will scan every piece of mail that you get and then send them to you accordingly. From there, you can store, send and reply just as you would an e-mail, without filling your office with clutter.
Invest in Paperless Office Solutions
Put these tips into play and do what you can to invest in paperless office solutions that count. These strategies will make your workplace more productive as a whole.
We’d love to help you make your company paperless by explaining the many different services that we offer.
Take the time to contact us when you need help with going paperless.