Why Your Company Should Consider Going Paperless
Information is the heartbeat of an organization. Businesses need to manage and distribute information related to all of their departments’ business processes. This list can be long, as it typically includes Accounting, Customer Service, Human Resources, Legal, Operations, and more) and may need to be compliant with Sarbanes Oxley or HIPAA. If the circulation and management of this information slows down or becomes ineffective, progress gets stalled, and business concerns start to surface.
When a company is working under a tight budget in a demanding economic environment, every technology-related decision is predicated on its ability to generate an appreciable ROI. One major cost area in companies getting scrutinized is paper-based business systems. Traditional paper-based methods for creating and delivering documents are fraught with huge costs, chronic inefficiency, costly errors, and offer little flexibility. Some of these costs, which can be mitigated with Enterprise Content Management (ECM) and Workflow Automation, include:
- Paper and paper-related expenses
- Storage
- Labor
- Capital expenses
- Employee productivity
- Business processes
Why Do Companies Still Rely on Paper?
Many companies keep old paper-based systems for two reasons:
- They do not know how much they’re really spending
- They fear negative ROI from implementing a new solution
Paper-intensive companies need to find alternatives to these methods to reduce paper usage and eliminate paper costs that decrease their bottom line.
Successful ECM Projects Start With a Review of Your Current Expenses
Converting a company from paper-based processes to digital processes can seem like it is going to be an overwhelming expense, but it doesn’t have to be.
Calculating an ROI financial analysis requires careful study of current physical costs (paper, toner, paper storage, postage, shipping, envelopes) and labor costs (retrieving, handling, and filing paper copies).
Forrester Research references the ROI of imaging, suggesting companies follow these steps before converting to a paperless process management system:
- Create a formal needs assessment
- Establish specific goals to be addressed
- Know your costs
- Evaluate solutions
- Build a business case with a clear ROI.
When companies go through the exploratory process, they begin to discover the excessive costs related to paper and inefficient processes. They can now consider adopting a paperless process management strategy document to achieve long-term cost savings and better efficiency.
Why Going Paperless Is the Only Solution for Large Enterprises and SMEs
The Gartner Group recognizes the components of Enterprise Content Management as top technology priorities for businesses.
An ECM system makes it possible to lower the high costs of paper and paper-related products, reduce manual processing of documents, improve business processes, enable businesses to scale their operations, and improve general efficiency in their organization.
Cost reduction from eliminating paper and storage for documents, a cut-back in operating expenses (daily time savings, eliminated rework, time lost looking for misplaced documents) are some of the benefits businesses achieve immediately.
A new paperless system can be added in stages, with a series of projects that do not require converting all paper documents and business processes at the same time. New processes can be added over time as a business grows.
