When was the last time you sent a love letter to your loved ones or received a small chit from the weighing machine saying you are 50kg đ How long has it been that you stood in the queue to get a ticket at the railway counter or received a hard copy of the memo for your weak performance at the office? Did your manager send you an envelope saying you âtoday’s meeting at 4 PM in conference room XYZâ? Or do you still hold any hard copy of the shares, traded in the share market? The world is changing and it’s pivotal that we change with the world too. Going paperless has become the new normal.
Time to go paperless
The digital world has taken over the offices. The physical offices have turned into virtual offices and in-person meetings to online meetings. We have experienced a strong wave of technology with the covid era. Going paperless was already adopted to some extent, but now it has become a necessity. Today, we will talk about the ways how to go paperless in the office.
Why there is a need to go paperless?
6th November 2021 is celebrated as âWorld Paper Free Dayâ. On this day, people across the world are encouraged to avoid the usage of paper for a day to eradicate dependency on paper. People now understand the impact of excessive use of paper and take action against it, but what is the impact?
Environmental:
The world consumes 300 million tons of paper every year. It takes 24 trees to produce 1 ton of paper approximately. We are suffering global warming due to fewer trees and now imagine the number of trees reducing day by day.
Business:
In 2018, the average office worker used 10,000 sheets of copy paper each year but 45% of paper printed in offices ends up trashed by the end of the day.
A typical employee devotes 30-40% of their precious time searching for the right files and information in it. We all know, time is money.
How to go paperless?
Many organizations have already taken a step and with Covid in place, others were forced to go paperless.
Going paperless would eventually remove paper piled up from our desk, cubicles, shoving off from drawers, stacked in cupboards, and hidden in the safe of the office. All organizations want to have omnipresence be it for employees or customers. But many are afraid of taking the first step as they are not sure about the process or skeptical about the security of their data when digitalized.
The process is simple;
5 myths of a paper-free office
- A paperless office is always expensive
- There is a lot of work involved in running a paper-free office.
- My office work is impossible to achieve through the paperless environment
- It’s difficult to understand and deal with paper-free office
- It’s not possible to have a 100% paper-free office
10 simple steps to build a paper-free office
- Paperless policy
Make a paperless policy and provide the key benchmarks and goals for the use of papers. You can set up specific limits for printing, packaging, office supplies, marketing materials, and mails.
- Paperless reception
The reception is not a place where the visitors or employees should be welcomed with a heap of papers on the desk. It should be a clean and flawless experience for any person as it forms 1st impression of your office. Make use of the best tool and technology to transform the reception into a paperless entrance.
- Motivate people
Motivate the employee by having a champion with the least paper usage. Spread awareness about the impact of paper usage having on the environment.
- Hardcopies reduction
Reduce the use of paper printing, promote easy sharing and verification of files via internal tools.
- Digitalize your financial system
Choose electronic/online banking, have software for your internal finance team to process all the transactions, and say no to paper.
- Trendsetting of paper alternatives
All the paper cups and plates we see in the offices too, contribute to the paper usage and this can be solved by setting a trend of bringing own water bottle, plates and replacing tissue papers with hand dryers.
- Adopt paperless marketing
Digital marketing is in trend but still, most of the companies promote marketing via giving flyers, leaflets, and visiting cards, this can be replaced via a digital medium by sharing digital cards, business e-marketing, and developing interactive websites.
- Electronic Collaboration tool
Organizations already hit by the covid wave have adopted most of the electronic collaboration tools like OneDrive, MS Teams, Skype, and Zoom calls. But as the offices open up, the trend to save and share data over the shared drive and collaboration tool still need to be maintained.
- Robust Secured system
Planning and implementing is not an easy process, you need the experts to transform your office experience without impacting productivity and for this, there is a need for a robust and secured system that can protect the data of your organization and at the same point of time, provide a seamless experience
- Education about the paperless environment
It’s not an easy job to bring in digitalization, having a digital sign outside the meeting room for scheduling, digital signatures for the approvals instead of hard copy. Digitalization involves the use of the latest tools and technology, which requires proper training to maintain harmony among the users.
Benefits of going paperless
Few believe that they help mother earth by going paperless, few believe that they are transforming their work structure to stay in the race with the digital world and many believe itâs a new normal and so they are bound by it. But although the above concepts stand true, there are internal short- and long-term benefits too.
Cost Saving
Businesses must cut costs on the things which can be replaced with an alternative without impacting the quality of business. The paperless office is the greatest example of it as it not only saves the cost involved in buying paper but also the accessories and machines related to it, employee hours in searching, segregating, and filing the documents.
Eradicate redundancy
Paper has a shorter life span and over time the files sitting in your cabinet become redundant unless a person is involved in managing the records consistently. The content on the paper gets wiped off automatically depending upon the quality of paper and ink used on it, paper gets torn off easily and involves heavy maintenance. The data stored on the server has a longer life span and can be stored forever, until its next use.
Saves Time
Imagine your employees doing more with less time. By skipping the task of finding papers, maintaining them, or making them available every time there is a need, you can save a lot of time. Just by organizing all your data at a commonplace providing authorizing access, you can have the required documents at your fingertips anytime anywhere.
Business Insights
Just by simple digital transformation, you can make your data available to an authorized person at any time. The omnipresence of the data makes it even easier for various teams in their task, be it a CEO or a sales representative. You can have all your business insight during cracking a deal or giving any presentation.
Unique Customer Experience
The world is all about creating an experience for the customer. It all comes down to a simple mantra i.e. âHappy customer is equal to flourishing businessâ. Customers feel happy when they donât have to maintain any paperwork and all their data is reserved with you, be it about the medical transcripts or their shopping bills. They donât have time to preserve the invoice or the medical bills to produce again at a later stage. It becomes easier for them if the data is saved for them and they just provide their contact details to retrieve the data, the next time they visit the place for any purpose.
Conclusion
If you wish to transform your office experience and bring in digitalization, Oriental Solutions is the best choice to break free all myths. We value quality and help our customers with end-to-end solutions. Getting a paper-free office is just 4 steps away;
- Consult an expert from Oriental Solutions
- Strategize a plan of action
- Implement the strategy in the environment
- Become adaptable towards the new normal strategy of going green.
Connect with Oriental Solutions, break free of all the myths, help the planet, and reap the fruits of your investments in a short amount of time. Get expert advice and the best DMS (Data Management Specialist) for the transformation of your office. So contact us @ http://orientalsolutions.com/contact.php or call at 044 2498 6018
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