Documents play an important role in the operation of any business and going paperless can be a difficult objective. The question is: Can an office really achieve going absolutely paperless? The hard answer is a big NO, but you can reduce your paper usage to achieve these objectives:
- Stop office congestion – Lots of weekly, and monthly reports are printed in 3-ply continuous forms and distributed to department managers only to be deposited in filing cabinets.
- Minimize cost of paper and printer consumables, and energy – unnecessary printing is a waste of money, time and resources.
- Preserve the environment – Nearly four billion trees around the world are cut down each year for the use of paper industries. Proper print management can help reduce your environmental impact.
The above objectives fall within the main goals of managed print services providers like OneDoc.
But how do you know that your office is ready to go paperless? Look for these signs:
1. An Overflowing Filing System
Even with the advent of the internet and information technology, lots of offices are still storing copies of every transaction, report, payroll, memorandum, etc in storage rooms and cabinets. These paper files occupy a huge part of your office space, clutter up on your desk when you use them, and can be difficult to find once they are stored.
If you notice this situation in your office, it could be time for you to consider paperless methods. You may seek professional assistance from an experienced provider of managed print services for effective document management solutions to declutter and create more space in your work environment.
2. Incidence of Lost Documents is too Frequent
Misfiling and misplacing paper documents is a common scenario in every office. The search for lost or misplaced reports can be translated into lost time which is detrimental to your business.
An effective way to prevent this is to save the documents digitally and store them in a way that makes them easy to search and retrieve.
3. Your Office is the Only Place You can Work with those Documents
Access limitation can prevent you and your staff from working on certain documents out of the office. When it’s time to produce periodic reports, you will have no choice but to spend extra hours in the office sifting through folders manually. This system ties you to your desk all the time. Can you imagine bringing bulky folders with you if you want to work on them at home or in another location?
This is certainly not the case if you go digital.The paperless system is so flexible it allows you to work on files of any size from almost anywhere.
4. You are Bothered by Your File Storage and Printing Costs
Storing hard copies of files and documents is a costly business. It requires you to buy storage facilities and printing consumables such as toner or ink, folders, continuous forms, bond paper, paper fasteners, etc. The price of these commodities rises each year and it can easily make you spend up to $15,000 annually.
You can cut up to 30% of your printing costs if you go digital. A proficient provider of print management solutions can certainly help to streamline your print environment and eliminate unnecessary printing.
5. Your Fax Machine has Become Useless
With the advent of more advanced technologies like email, the days of the fax machine are over. Your contacts are no longer using them because of data security and other issues like power outages, paper jams, etc.
The obsolescence of the fax machine is another indicator that it’s time for you to move on to paperless systems.
Going paperless can be an efficient and cost-effective means for you to improve your file and document management system. Be sure to seek the assistance of an expert-managed print services provider like OneDoc!
Call us toll free at 1.844.633.3050.