Paper slows you down. Use your copier to speed up your work.
How many times in a week do you look for a document on your desk thinking “I just put it over here . . . “?
You might think that's only a few minutes each time, no big deal. Those minutes can add up to hours looking for paper-based files. As busy as you are, can you afford to spend your time looking for information that you could have at your fingertips?
Enter Your Digital Copier
This is where you need to put your digital copier to work using one of its other capabilities – scanning paper documents. In brief, your copier can convert your paper document into a digital one. This makes it easier to find, use, and store more efficiently.
The last thing you need to be doing in your busy day is looking for documents that you could instead have at your fingertips.
For you, it's a personal productivity boomlet. (If you want to know more about how this is good for you; click here to read Business Process Improvements Are Good for Your Office – But What's in it for You?)
For your office, better productivity can equal better information security, more productivity, happier customers, and cost savings.
Less Paper = More Productivity
While we might all be used to paper, it does slow down business processes. Plenty of research is available to support that statement. Let's take a look at research from AIIM (Paper Free – Are we there yet?), a non-profit association focused on information management challenges.
If you use your multifunction copier for copying more than scanning you're not alone – 33% of survey respondents said this was the case in their offices. And 37% report an office “piled high with paper and paper processes.”
When information is stored in file cabinets it takes minutes to retrieve the document you're looking for. How many minutes depends on the location of the filing cabinet – is it in your office or down the hall? Walking to retrieve documents is wasted time. Capturing documents and storing them in a document management repository or even a simple file-sharing solution with a clear foldering structure will allow you to find relevant documents in seconds, not minutes.
Less Paper = Better Information Security
We often think of data breaches as only related to computers and networks. That's not true. Physical paper files are also the source of data breaches. Copies of patient files containing protected health information (PHI) sitting in the output tray of your copier is ripe for theft (and potential HIPAA violations and fines).
Digital content can be encrypted and stored with access permissions so that you have an audit trail of who accessed a particular file. Read more about the Case for Security Documents here.
Less Paper = Happier Customers
All that time you're not walking to find an answer for a customer (while they're on hold or waiting for you to call them back) is time you get to spend on the phone actually answering a customer's questions. With their account information and documentation easily accessible online you can answer questions about contracts, billing, etc. without having to ask them to wait or play a game of phone tag with them.
AIIM research confirms this benefit – 43% of respondents said that faster customer response was the biggest benefit of paper-free processes.
Less Paper = Saving Money
In a typical office, the average paper consumption is 10,000 sheets per year (that's 20 reams of paper per employee). Managing paper documents is also expensive –
- Filing cabinets (which require time to manage the documents as well as take up space – and office space is expensive; about $2/square foot in Dallas)
- Retention requirements mean that these documents need to be stored according to your records Retention requirements – from three years for some business documents to the lifetime of customer for some industries, such as insurance and healthcare. These documents need to be stored somewhere – either onsite or in an offsite storage facility
- Misfiled paper – 3% of an organization's paper documents are misfiled
- Early payment discounts – it's difficult to take advantage of early payment discounts in a paper-based, manual process
Using your copier to scan documents, especially when combined with document management software to enable process automation, delivers real return on investment. AIIM's research shows a return on investment on capture tools (software and hardware) within six months of 44% of paper-free projects.
Read about the Document Management Stats That Say Just Do It! here. Then, click on the button below for an initial assessment.
