Making the paperless office a reality

The rise of computers, smart phones and the availability of other digital devices have created conditions favorable to making our dream of paper-free offices a reality. However, to transition to a paperless office hasn’t been as easy as it would seem for most companies.

In a report on the status of paper-free progress recently released by the Association of Information and Image Management (AIIM), it appears that while some headway is being made, there is still have a long way to go to achieve their paper-free goals. Only 17% of survey respondents said they work in a paper-free office, and 31% reported that their offices are piled with paper documents and processes.

For those companies who have persevered in implementing paper-free processes, the return on investment has been promising with a clear 84% of the respondents indicating that they achieved a payback from their paper-free projects in less than 18 months. The benefits from implementing these paper-free processes were improved customer response, productivity, compliance, and monitoring of workflow. 

You can’t expect to achieve a Paper free office overnight. A successful transition could span several years. Below are some recommendations for successfully implementing a paperless office:

• Start small. Begin with only one or two departments and scale up from there. It’s overwhelming and can hurt your end goal if you try to tackle multiple areas of your organization at once When you successfully transform the processes of one or two departments and show a good ROI for your efforts, there's a better chance other departments will want to participate. And with a document capture solution from inFORM Decisions, you can easily scale up or down depending on your actual needs, without spending money on any features or licensing you don't require.

• Include a capture function. You shouldn’t apply a document management solution that doesn’t include the essential document scanning and capture functions necessary for workflow automation. Although ECM systems are very beneficial, document capture is an effective tool for you to make the most of your document management investment and reach your goal of paper reduction.

• The solution must be adoptable and easy to use. Implementing a complicated, laborious system will discourage user adoption and will likely have a negative impact on your overall result. Besides reducing your paper reliance, a good document management solution should make your organization's processes easier and more cost-effective. The solution should improve productivity instead of being tedious to use.

Are you interested in learning more about achieving a paperless office,  contact the inFORM Decisions’ sales team today or read  more of our blog posts on the improvement of the business process.

Our website: http://www.informdecisions.com/ - Phone numbers: (949) 709-5838 / (800) 858-5544

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