Becoming a paperless office has always been something of a pipe dream, something that is potentially possible but is as far away as cars powered by air and cancer being cured. These are extreme examples of course, but is it really possible in today’s society to have a completely paperless office?
To some extent the answer is a firm yes. You can certainly make your office completely paperless and handle all your files and document digitally, but you obviously can’t help the flow of documents that comes to you from an outside source. Through services like document scanning and digital management, many larger companies have already revolutionised the way that they work within their own offices. Companies like these are always seeking new and inventive ways to improve their organisation, which leads to further advances in productivity until they finally have the perfect machine. However the perfect machine isn’t as possible as they might think it is, because whilst they’re saving on paper and saving on costs as well as time and resources, they can’t help what comes from the outside.
By using a document scanning service combined with a high quality document management system or software, you can indeed make your office entirely paperless, but is it overkill and is it worth the financial cost?
Saving any amount of paper, large or small, is never overkill. We are already using far too many trees that aren’t being adequately replaced and therefore less oxygen is being let into our natural environment which we obviously need, and more and more animals and people are losing their homes every year from our massive paper consumption, and on a much less important scale, eventually if that carries on there won’t be any trees left to create more paper.
As for the financial cost, you may be surprised to find out that costs are kept incredibly low when it comes to document scanning. Technology, these days, allows the document scanning companies to produce scans at a considerably higher rate and therefore can charge less per sheet. In many instances if you have a lot of paper to convert, it can be from 1p (2c) per sheet, which is inarguably low.
As we are moving into a world where we are increasingly concerned about the environment in which we live, so it hinders and helps business in equal measure. Of course there is an increasing pressure to be more environmentally friendly but on top of that the need to be more productive, much faster. A seemingly impossible task, but with a good quality document management system and software it can be healthy for the environment through the lack of printing, efficient and speedy which is inarguably a positive from all sides. Plus new-found green credentials could help land further clients and encourage current ones to follow by your example!
I’m in no way saying that document scanning and management is the saviour of the world, it isn’t, that’s up to us at the end of the day, but it’s certainly going to help business become more environmentally sound whilst also increasing productivity healthily.
