Paper documents seem to be a thing of the past within many companies and ‘going paperless’ now seems to be the way forward. There are many benefits of doing so, including reducing costs, freeing up office space and enhanced workflow practices. What’s more, it can also greatly improve your business’s carbon footprint and allow you to do your bit for a greener planet. Going paperless may seem like a daunting proposition initially, however, you can take small and gradual steps until you reach the end goal. There are many solutions for going paperless – check out just a few below:
Pick a storage service
Did you know that employees spend 40% of the average day looking for physical documents? Astonishingly, this occurs within several business niches and has been proven to greatly impact productivity within the workforce. Going paperless means finding an online storage system that works well for your business, in which you can digitally save files and share them between employees with ease. Cloud computing platforms such as Dropbox and Microsoft One Drive are the most popular options on the market. However, there are many other varieties on the market that may be more suited to your business processes and style of working.
Scan and shred documents
Going paperless means getting into new practices and habits for the long-term – but you need to start somewhere. Uploading old documents onto a computer system would be your first port of call. It would be worth spending a day scanning physical copies, before shredding and recycling the physical copy, so you can start to clear out the office and make additional space. If you haven’t got a shredder, there are many other ways to destroy sensitive documents, This can be a mundane task when you have a backlog of documents to get through, however, sticking to this process will make it much easier to follow through once you utilize the correct apps and systems.
Using the relevant software
When deciding to go paperless, installing the correct software is crucial in many aspects of your business. As an example, bookkeeping software allows you to digitally record incomings and expenditures on a live platform such as peoplexcd.com and is essentially much more convenient than storing and accessing physical files.
The danger of physical files is that they can be accessed by anyone within the office, whereas most software types are secure and can only be retrieved by those with the correct access information. Monitoring the company’s finances via software is the key to effective bookkeeping in the modern business world.
Use note-taking apps in meetings
When it comes to weekly or monthly meetings, taking notes digitally as opposed to jotting them down on paper and storing the paper in the filing cabinet leads to greater efficiency. Physical note-taking is more time-consuming and may result in having to sift through multiple filing cabinets until you come across what you’re looking for. Note-taking apps, on the other hand, ensure that all of the information is stored in one place. Some of the most popular note-taking apps include:
- Apple Notes
- Google Docs
- Google Keep
The benefit of this strategy is that notes can be shared across many devices between employees and edited as necessary.
