While a completely paperless approach might not be possible yet, the paperless technologies are already having significant impacts on the traditional businesses. A paperless environment is beneficial for both the company and the environment. Here are the most prominent ways about how cloud-based paperless technology is changing traditional businesses.
Enhancing Data Security
Regardless of their type, all businesses are conscious about the security and integrity of their confidential documents. Ensuring the maximum amount of privacy for these business documents is a critical determiner of developing a successful business. The traditional ways of handling documents are not capable of ensuring the reliable security for these documents. While the available options include locking the files in a cabinet, shredding them etc., these are definitely not full-proof approaches to data protection. If these documents are accessed on a regular basis, these security approaches can make the process more difficult, resulting with a reduced level of business productivity.
Creating a paperless environment is the perfect antidote to this kind of intriguing problems. As there will be no physical copies of your confidential business documents, there will be fewer chances of violating the document integrity. The documents will be shared with your company personnel only, which mean no outsider will have access to your business documents.
As an added layer of security, you can assign specific roles to your employees and set role-specific access to the critical files. By doing this, you can make sure that the confidential files are not shared with unnecessary people. Various cloud-based Document Management System (DMS) includes a smart feature called revision tracking. This feature constantly tracks the changes made in your files. You can review the changes, accept or reject them, or restore a previous version of the file.
Reliable Document Repository
Modern businesses need quick access to all the necessary information. This is critical when you need to make quick decisions. Unfortunately, the traditional paper-based system provides no easy way of finding the necessary information within seconds. Sorting through all the files and folders will definitely take some time. In case of larger companies, there will be a huge amount of documents. It will be a challenge to organize all these documents in a systematic way. Then, there is also the issue of document storage. You will need things like drawers, cabinets and electrical equipment like printer, copier etc. to create and store the documents. If you want to keep multiple backups of your documents, the total expenses could easily become twice or thrice the original amount.
You won’t have to face any of these issues when using paperless technologies. Since paperless systems are totally devoid of papers, you don’t have to worry about the best ways to manage your documents. It also reduces the necessity of any storage solutions. You can keep multiple backups at the fraction of the original cost. The paperless systems make it very easy to increase or decrease your virtual storage requirements.
One of the biggest advantages of using a cloud-based DMS is to enjoy a better and faster way of organizing your documents. When you have all your business documents uploaded to the cloud, you can find the necessary document with a few mouse clicks. Paperless technologies also make it a lot easier to collaborate and/or share various documents between groups of people.
Reducing the Overall Expense
Decreasing the operations cost is one of the main targets for any business. Among the various ways of doing this, going paperless is one of the fastest and most rewarding ways. When you are relying on papers for regular business operations, you are opting into several unnecessary expenses.
First of all, there is the obvious cost of buying papers. Then, you need to buy printer and copier machines. You will need ink, toner and cartridge for the equipment. They also need regular maintenance. And if you are running large-scale operations, you may have to employ a full-time staff for the printing and copying purposes. Because paper-based system reduces your business efficiency, it is also increasing your operation expenses.
As you can guess, going paperless takes care of all these issues. As the whole process will be virtual, you won’t have to deal with paper anymore. That means no more paper, printing or copying equipment buying, energy bills or the maintenance expenses. While there is a fee for using the document management systems, it is very nominal compared to the traditional approach.
As I have discussed above, paperless technologies will increase your overall efficiency. Going paperless also makes it a lot easier to share the same document with multiple individuals. Instead of making multiple copies of the physical document, you can share a link to the document and everyone can access the file from their laptop, computer or smartphone.
Eco-friendly Business Approach
When you rely on a paper-based system, you naturally use a lot of paper. According to one estimate, an average office worker in the USA uses about 10,000 pieces of paper every year. And the trend of paper usage is increasing at a significant process. Tree and fresh water are the two main ingredients of paper. Therefore, increasing paper usage means more use of these precious resources. If the current rate of paper consumption continues, we will lose all the rainforests within the next 100 years. The paper manufacturing process releases a lot of harmful substances, making it the third-most polluting manufacturing process in the USA and Canada.
When you go paperless, you are actually eliminating all these harmful processes. When you factor in the paper carrying, distribution, printing, electricity usage etc., the effect is huge. By implementing a cloud-based DMS in your business, you can play your part in saving the environment.
Automated Backups
Losing a necessary file could bring unnecessary complications in your life. Every business follows some established rules in their daily operations. Losing access to a file or misfiling a document could be fatal to these kinds of setups. One way to avoid these problems is to keep multiple backups of the necessary documents. But as we have seen in the discussion above, keeping multiple backups of your physical documents bring additional issues like extra storage, paper and printing cost, data privacy etc.
Can you guess the best solution to handle this kind of situation? If you said using a paperless technology, you are absolutely right. When using cloud services, you can easily keep multiple backups of your necessary business documents at little to no cost at all. What’s more, some DMS automatically creates multiple backups of your uploaded files and store them in different servers.
Seamless Integration
In the modern age, businesses are making use of various latest tools and technologies. When your business relies on the paper-based system, you can’t establish a reliable communication channel with the modern tools. You have to input the data manually and handle the outputs on your own.
On the contrary, cloud-based document management systems feature complete integration with the modern business tools. Once you complete the basic configurations, these systems can provide the data input without any manual intervention and store the output for further inspection. In the future, paperless technologies are expected to get better at their communication with the other business tools. If you start the process now, you will be able to reap these future benefits without any delay.
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