Can your business become paperless?

Currently, it seems like society as a whole is highly unlikely ever to go completely paperless. Businesses, on the other hand, seem very likely to go almost completely paperless.

In the commercial world, the march to digital seems unstoppable. It will just take a few more technological developments for it to be complete. Here, Gavin Prior, Operations Manager at Rads Document Storage, shares his insight into how businesses can adapt a paperless society.

The role of paper in society

For centuries, paper has been one of society’s most useful workhorses. It, therefore, seems appropriate that it appears to be following the path of actual horses. In other words, paper is now mostly used for leisure.

Popular activities such as crafting, scrapbooking and journaling will probably see paper keep its place in the home. It’s also debatable if ebooks will ever fully replace printed ones. This will see paper keep its place in the business world to some extent. People will need to buy their supplies from somewhere. They may also want lessons on how to use it.

Paper may also still be used for a few, niche, applications (e.g. till receipts). These will, however, become increasingly niche. For example, a lot of receipts are already sent electronically.

The reasons for the drive to digital

There are three main reasons behind the drive to digital. These are sustainability, costs and benefits. Paper may cause less damage overall than plastic but commercially-made paper is made using a lot of chemicals, water and energy.

There are ways to address this. Unfortunately, at present, the cost of these makes the end product too expensive for most businesses. Also, the end product isn’t really suitable for most business applications. It is, however, fine for leisure use. This is why the main market for it is consumers.

The digital world does still have its environmental concerns. These are, however, being addressed. For example, the digital world is powered by electricity. Traditionally, this was generated by coal-fuelled power stations. Now, it is much more likely to be generated by clean sources, especially renewables.

Costs and benefits essentially go hand in hand. In the context of cost, the issue is not so much the purchase cost of paper as compared to digital infrastructure. It is the fact that paper typically requires a lot more manual handling and/or complex infrastructure. Digital, by contrast, is easy to handle, secure and can improve business processes.

The benefits of digital for business

Going digital offers three main benefits for businesses. These are better space-efficiency, more robust security and the opportunity to optimise business processes.

Better use of space

The adoption of remote/hybrid working hasn’t just been driven by a desire to offer more flexibility. It’s also been driven by a desire to downsize office space and the costs involved with it. Storing paper on-site can get very expensive very quickly.

Even storing paper offsite can often be an expense you can largely do without. There may be some paper you need (or just want) to archive off-site (e.g. for legal reasons). The less you store, however, the lower your costs will be.

If you’re still using fax machines, then replacing them with efaxes (Fax over IP) will often save you hassle as well as space. You’ll also save on printing costs and get better security.

More robust security

Paper is relatively easy to damage or lose. It is also vulnerable to theft, usually by copying. When data is kept digitally, by contrast, it becomes practical to have more than one copy of it.

It also becomes much easier to keep track of where each copy is stored and who has access to it. You can even keep automated records of who accessed what data, when and for what purpose. This means that the more data you keep in digital format, the easier it is to comply with data-security programs (e.g. GDPR).

Optimised business processes

Moving to digital processes offers numerous, meaningful benefits for businesses. Here are just a few of the main ones.

Contactless working

Going paperless makes it much easier to go contactless. This means that there is less scope for germs to be passed through touch.

Location-independent working

This can mean anything from fully-remote working to being able to hot-desk easily. It, therefore, applies to the vast majority of businesses.

Disaster recovery

As the COVID lockdowns showed, businesses that use digital processes have a far easier path to disaster recovery than ones that depend on paper.

Options to introduce self-service

Even if all a person does is fill in a form online, it is still more efficient than having a staff member provide them with a paper form and then collect it once it’s complete. In actual fact, one of the biggest potential benefits of going digital is the scope for automating processes.

Automation

Going digital is a prerequisite for automation. Automating basic tasks has the potential to save even the smallest businesses significant amounts of money. In fact, it would probably be enough to justify going digital even if there weren’t any other benefits to it.

Barriers to going fully paperless

Given all of the benefits of going paperless, it seems reasonable to ask why businesses aren’t (almost) paperless already. The answer is that there are still some barriers to be cleared. Here are the main ones.

The law

Businesses are still required to keep some documents on paper for legal reasons. This requirement may never go away completely. It is, however, becoming less and less of an issue as time passes.

The need to accept paper

Some businesses may see little benefit to going digital as they still need to accept paper from certain sources. The answer to this is to use technologies such as scanning and optical character recognition (OCR) to digitise any paper they receive as quickly as possible. Then they can still get most of the benefits of digital.

The learning curve

Some businesses may have concerns about the learning curve required as part of the move to digital. This is currently being addressed by creating digital technologies that create a similar experience to using paper.

The cost

Moving to digital can have a fairly high upfront cost. This can be off-putting for businesses (especially SMEs) even though they know that the long-term savings will justify it. One way to address this issue is to move digital in stages.

Ergonomics

Up until now, using digital tools has simply not delivered the same experience as using paper. For example, reading off a screen is very different to reading off paper. Now, however, technology companies are moving to address this.

For example, eBook readers have screens that are optimised for reading. It seems likely that tablet manufacturers will start to introduce settings that include a “reading” mode.

Similarly, handwriting/notating and drawing/doodling have all been much easier on paper than on screen. Again, however, technology companies are moving to address this. For example, you can now buy styluses that work like pens but operate on a screen. You can also buy screen covers that simulate the look, feel and sound of paper.

Currently, it seems like society as a whole is highly unlikely ever to go completely paperless. Businesses, on the other hand, seem very likely to go almost completely paperless. In the commercial world, the march to digital seems unstoppable. It will just take a few more technological developments for it to be complete.