4 questions to ask yourself about your paper processes

For many years, the concept of the paperless office has seemed rather Utopian; fine in principle but very difficult to deliver in practice.

The rise of digital document processing platforms and cloud-based storage has been a real game changer. It has enabled more businesses to move away from ‘traditional’ paper-based systems.

Across an organisation, paper consumption can amount to a significant cost. In addition, paper files take up valuable storage space, while paper-based processes such as finance management are consuming and unwieldy to deal with.

If you’re still unsure about making the switch away from paper to digital document management, try asking yourself the following questions.

How much time and money do we waste on using paper documents?

“Time is money” is one of those clichés that happens to be true.

You may not have the time to figure out exactly how much of the working week you and your employees spend shuffling, filing and looking for paper statements, invoices and purchase orders, but surveys show that this is a perennial problem.

According to a WorkMobile survey, two thirds of businesses waste as much as £2,000 per employee per year through a reliance on paper, while 60% of employees are printing documents 3 times per week, and 30% print paperwork every single day. This adds up to significant employee time that could be used more productively.

How much money do we spend on paper and postage?

Even if you can’t pull a figure from the air instantly, the chances are that this kind of money that could be better spent elsewhere.

A UK government report into the postal sector found that 30% of UK businesses visit a post office branch at least once a week, and 91% of all mail handled originates from a business source.

Even with bulk and discounted rates, post is a still an inherently costly and inefficient way of sending invoices and statements to customers and of receiving purchase orders. It is far cheaper and more efficient to do everything using digital – paperless – document systems.

How often do we misplace documents?

Research by the office supply specialists Fellowes found that employees across the UK spend more than a million hours per week looking for misplaced documents, while 20% claimed to have paperwork more than 5 years old taking up space in the workplace.

Digital document management systems such as Zetadocs offer a seamless, secure and affordable solution to the problems presented by paper.

Besides being good for business, by freeing up staff time and resources to get on with the important matter of actually running your business, systems like Zetadocs can have a massively positive impact on the environment, and with it your corporate branding.

How good is our customer service?

When a customer or supplier asks for a copy of an invoice, purchase order or statement, how long does it take to address this request?

Do you want to have to search through a paper filing system, hoping all the while that the relevant copy of the paperwork will have been filed accurately i.e. in the right place?

Or do you retrieve the document without leaving your desk from a single digital storage point?

If the latter, you probably realise that turnaround time to fulfil document copy requests reduces from days to minutes or hours. In turn, this resolves your customer’s query much more quickly.

Next steps

Contact Equisys now on 0207 203 4001 to find out how Zetadocs for NAV and Zetadocs Expenses can help you go paperless and deliver competitive advantage for your organisation. Or speak to your NAV partner.