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The notion of paperless offices (or even paper-light offices) has been bandied about for years. But the idea often never materialised as the plan didn’t sit that high up on the business agenda.
But if one good thing came out of the past year is that we really didn’t need THAT much paper in the first place… did we?
Document management had to quickly become digital because, honestly, where could we store it all in our makeshift box-room/kitchen table–offices?
In fact, last summer researchers from IDC forecasted that page volume worldwide would fall 13.7% in 2020, from 3.2 trillion pages to 2.8 trillion. A big drop….but a lot more to go!
Aside from being better ‘green’ citizens, what other benefits can come from getting rid of the reams?
- Accessibility: Information which is digital is easier to search for and access rather than being confined to filing cabinets and storage boxes in the office
- Efficiency: If the information is easier to get to, then naturally it improves staff productivity and collaboration because more can be done with it
- Cost: Once office space runs out, organisations need to find more room, such as offsite storage services. Digital records result in saving money on physical storage and shredding
- Data Protection: When information is in the Cloud, it is easier to protect due to things like access control. Paperless records mean better controls being put in place to manage personal data
- Retention: With paper records, organisations have to manually handle the retention and deletion processes. With that comes the real risk of human error that something will be disposed of before or after it should be. With electronic records you can automate these processes to take the onus away from your users
- Back-up: Fire, floods, theft… paper records can be easily destroyed. Once records are in the Cloud, organisations can ensure that all the info is backed-up
- Covid-19: Finally, Covid. Who would have thought this would be on the list this time last year? It’s estimated that some strains can live on paper for up to 5 days! Is it now time to think about going paperless to help reduce the risk of Covid (or any other potential viruses, in fact) for good? Definitely one to think about, anyway!
We’ve managed to more or less ditch paper for the past 10 months, so now it’s time for organisations to think seriously about not returning to old ways once we’re back in the office.
At AI we’ve helped numerous councils, health trusts and other public sector bodies to go paper-light.
If your organisation is considering a paperless future and you want more information on the organisations we’ve helped with Cloud Migration, fill out the form below and someone will be in touch soon.
