Offices find going paperless means more efficiency, security

November 21, 2012

A number of articles continue to point to the increased advantages of going paperless in an office setting. Besides the obvious reduction of a business’s carbon footprint, often an office can increase its efficiency and security level when becoming all digital.

When an office becomes paperless, especially with help from document scanning companies to efficiently organize documents, digital files are much easier to locate and transfer. When searching for documents, companies can lose time, efficiency and money. According to Gartner Research, a misplaced file can cost a company $125 in lost productivity. Regaining this lost time and money is just one of the advantages of going paperless.

Hardware and printing costs can also cause profit loss in companies keeping paper documents, between keeping up with filing cabinets and shelving. By going digital, a company is able to avoid losing money through printing costs, nor does it need to fight for more office space to keep up with paper documents. Beyond that, moving filing cabinets and documents can also require both manpower and organizational resources that could be put to better use.

Security is also a serious concern as it relates to paper documents. If a business is destroyed or broken into, lost paper files are at much greater risk than if they were backed up and available electronically. If lost data is not recovered quickly, many businesses are unable to survive.

Often the only disadvantage of going paperless in the office is that it takes time to convert paper documents to electronic ones. Overall, for businesses making the switch from paper to digital documents, the use of third-party scanning services improves efficiency and increases productivity and profit in the long run.