Many Massachusetts Businesses Are Going Paperless And Yours Can Too

The paperless office presents a business that adopts such a strategy with a diverse mix of benefits. Most well-known are the tendency to save on costs (paper alone can be an expensive investment) and the relatively small impact that paperless operations leave on the environment. However, there are many more benefits that a paperless office has to offer.

Let’s go through these additional benefits now.

What Benefits Does a Paperless Office Enjoy?

Less Paper = More Security (And Who Wouldn’t Want That?)

While we focus a lot of our attention on cyberthreats, there are still a lot of threats that are decidedly low-tech. Do you know those film and television scenes where a shredded document is painstakingly reconstructed? There’s more truth to those than many might realize—and that’s assuming that every single document makes it to the shredder.

While the risk of someone searching through thousands of shredded strands is somewhat minimal, the risk of a stolen paper document isn’t. 

Think about it: how easy would it be for you, right now, to walk over to any filing cabinet, randomly pick a file, and walk away with it? If you acted confidently enough, chances are pretty good that nobody would question you. Once you were out of sight, folding it and slipping it into your pocket, handbag, or what have you would be a very simple prospect.

Operating with less paper greatly reduces these kinds of threats, effectively shoring up an entire threat vector.

Backups are Simpler to Take, and More Effective

Backups are, as we've said, a necessity for any modern business to have. Having said that, it is important that we address the fact that not all backups are equally effective. 

For instance—and I really hope this doesn’t apply to your business—paper backups are notoriously easy to misfile or otherwise mix up… particularly when they are being created. Plus, if you’re relying on paper backups to potentially have to restore a computing system, you’re tacking on a lot of restoration time and effort. On top of all that, while costs were literally the first thing we mentioned, restoring paper data on any scale is going to be more expensive than the paperless alternative would be.

Documents Can Be Shared More Effectively

The thing about paper documents is that you generally only need to have a single copy of said document—otherwise, keeping all your records up-to-date would become an even bigger challenge. So, what happens when more than one of your employees need a single document in order to do their jobs?

Paperless solutions, like cloud document storage, resolve this challenge. Not only can multiple employees access documents at the same time, but they can also even collaborate on them if need be—wherever and whenever they happen to be working.

Versioning Gives You the Chance to Look Back

Versioning—or retaining access to past revisions of your documents—is an insanely useful feature. It’s also one that isn’t very enactable when utilizing paper documents, unless you happen to have unlimited storage space and time to ensure everything is filed correctly—which it’s probably a safe assumption to say you don’t. Going paperless makes this kind of record-keeping sustainable and accessible, enabling you to refer back if need be.

Your Documents Suddenly Become Searchable

On a similar note, there will likely be times that you need to look back at your documents for a specific bit of information or data. A digitized, paperless record makes this a far simpler and efficient process, particularly if your platform of choice enables you to scan the contents of your saved materials to seek out specific information.

Signatures are Easier to Collect, and More Secure

Many modern business processes need to be signed off on, and it is generally a good practice to have someone put their John Hancock on any and all agreements for the sake of transparency. When operating with paper documents, this can be a real pain—but collecting a paperless signature is a far simpler prospect. In the right circumstances, collecting a paperless signature is as simple as sending an email.

Paperless Supports Remote Operations

Finally, we come to the point that the past few years have really emphasized as important: how successfully paperless operations can translate to remote work. Remote operations ultimately make all of the above processes even more challenging to accomplish with hard copies of your documents. However, with the right tools in place, a paperless setup makes working from home and in the office functionally indistinguishable… not to mention far more convenient for your remote team members.

Whatever your motivation for doing so, Datalyst is here to help you make the switch to paperless processes and operations. Give us a call at (774) 213-9701 today!