Why Your Business Should Go Paperless

Are you tired of stuffed file cabinets, transferring papers from department to department, and not having access to documents when you need them?

These are just some of reasons why your business should go paperless. Making the switch to digital helps you save money, improve security, and boost efficiency and productivity.

 

Improves Storage and Security

One of the most obvious benefits of going paperless is easier storage. Paper takes up more space than you might realize. Digital documents, on the other hand, can be stored very compactly on any data storage device, including storage devices in the “cloud”. This also gives you the added benefit of simplifying, and also strengthening, both security and access control at the same time. You get a “two for the price of one” deal!

Paper documents are usually stored in a drawer or file cabinet that might have a simple lock. When you go paperless, your documents are behind layers of security, preventing unauthorized access. User account controls and anti-malware help to keep your documents are safer.

A provider can ensure your business has the best possible security and storage solution for your needs.

 

Increases Accessibility

If your goal is to provide a more flexible work environment, going paperless is key here. It gives you and your employees the ability to access documents from anywhere.

Do you have a sales team that needs access to important files when visiting clients?

 When you store documents in the cloud, they’ll always have access to what they need without having to come back to the office. Plus, this also makes it possible for your business to offer a remote or hybrid work option.

At the same time, employees won’t need to run around all over, looking for paper documents. This further increases your productivity and efficiency.

 

More Opportunities to Make Team Collaboration More Efficient

Collaborating as a team using paper documents usually requires having in-person meetings to discuss and come to agreement on changes. It often also requires having to manually collect and collate feedback and collect signatures. The latter two tasks typically require moving papers from place to place, driving or walking them over to wherever they are needed. This process is slow, and also introduces a greater risk that those papers will be lost, damaged, or even destroyed in the process.

Going paperless also makes new methods of team collaboration possible.

By using electronic documents and cloud-based services such as Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, employees based in different locations can perform document editing together in real time. This includes making changes to files, adding notes, and requesting updates, and they can do all this and more, on the fly, as they talk about them. Everyone can also look at the document’s editing history to see what’s been changed. This results in a big increase in efficiency that allows such projects to be completed faster than ever.

A managed IT services provider can provide guidance to your business on how to select and manage cloud-based solutions to enable these efficiency improvements.

 

Processes Documents Faster

Mailing and faxing documents to different recipients for review and sign-off is time consuming. Contrast that to a paperless approach, where you just send out an email containing a link to the document, and it reaches all of the intended recipients in seconds. Going paperless allows you to quickly send out documents via email, request signatures via secure services such as DocuSign, share project details via cloud-based services like Google Docs, and much more.

All these new approaches save countless hours and makes processing documents easier for everyone involved. Plus, everyone can get a digital copy for everyone to keep for their own records, without having to deal with printers and copiers!

 

Creates a Greener Business

Do you have any idea of how much paper your business is using every year?

If you use just one 10-ream case each month, that’s 12 cases/year. At 10 reams per case, 500 sheets/ream, that’s a lot of trees! Going paperless is a simple and highly effective way to make your business greener. Plus, it makes managing your files easier than ever.

Of course, you’ll also save money on paper, ink, and printers as well—which is yet another perk!

 

Makes Tracking Easier

Need to quickly find a document?

• With paper, you have to spend time to track down the physical location where it’s been stored.

• With digital documents, you can simply type in a “search” command.

If you also use digital toolsets like Google Workspace, and Microsoft Teams, Sharepoint, or 365 that work with all your business’s software, you can search all the apps included with those packages at once to quickly find what you need. These tools can also search through apps that integrate with them—for example, Slack, CMS tools, etc.

The toolsets enable you to see which employees accessed which document; where they accessed it from, and from what device; how long they had it open, and more. This helps you get a very detailed understanding of the document’s overall access history

 

Reduces Risk of Data Loss

A final benefit of going paperless is the reduced risk of data loss. Natural disasters can happen anytime. With a digital approach, backup copies of your papers can be stored both locally, and in the cloud. Additional, with digital documents, you can perform regular backups. If someone accidentally deletes something, you’ll still have a copy. This isn’t always true with paper files.

 

 Want to Learn More?

At GSDSolutions, we can help you manage the transition to going paperless. We provide managed IT services in the Bay Area and in Modesto/Central Valley, and can recommend the best solutions for your business needs. Plus, you get access to senior-level experts to help you better manage your technology.

Give our team at GSDSolutions IT Services a call at (650) 282-7695, or email us at getstuffdone@gsdsolutions.io, to learn more about how we can help you optimize and maintain the smooth operation of the technology side of your business.