Just Green & Clean?

There is no doubt that a paperless office is cleaner, greener and more efficient. Reams of paper, once the mainstay of stationery cupboards in offices around Australia, are slowly but surely being replaced by digital solutions – and businesses are quick to tally up the cost savings.

One US study from Resources Information Systems Inc. estimates that companies spend about $8 billion per year managing paper. Imagine the savings if those paper-born costs were replaced with cloud-based digital solutions? Indeed, Capgemini Consulting has found that, on average, digital leaders are 50% more profitable, generate 13% greater revenue and have 19% higher market valuation than their industry peers. In other words, digitisation pays.

If the statistics alone aren’t enough to convince you, here are five reasons why going paperless will help your business save money.

Australians want to connect digitally

DocuSign’s latest research, Digitise or Die: Australia’s digital expectations, found that a massive 85% of consumers expect to do business digitally with you. Why? They find paper-based transactions slow, inconvenient and unreliable. They expect quick, seamless experiences – whether they are interacting with your business on their mobile, their tablet or their PC. If you don’t deliver on what your customers want, your brand and your business could suffer. Flip side, a satisfied customer leads to repeat business and more referrals.

You won’t lose out to your competitors

In the same research, over half (55%) of consumers would choose businesses that offer digital transaction methods over those that don’t- I bet you are already seeing that in tender requests and from client feedback. In other words, you could lose more than half of your customer base if you stick to paper-based transactions. By embracing a paperless approach – whether it be for a sales agreement, invoicing, site paperwork, time-sheets, event registration, work order, service contract or any other form that your business requires – you mitigate the risk of losing them to the competition.

It saves time, which translates to money

How much time do your team members waste printing, scanning, faxing and posting documents? What about chasing documents that have come back ‘not in good order’ or when a document comes back missing a signature or some other crucial bit of information? Or tedious data entry? By going paperless and using a digital system of e-forms and automatic process flows, your team’s time is freed up to focus on more meaningful tasks like customer engagement and business development. And, importantly, sales cycles and service delivery can speed up – which means revenue back into the business faster.

It reduces your stationery bill

What does your business spend on paper, printer ink, printer maintenance and postage each year? Not to mention filing cabinets! Studies have shown that using e-signatures can yield a saving of more than $36 per document. If you are regularly sending and receiving contracts, bills of sale or other paper-based transactions, then the costs very quickly add up. Going paperless will eliminate most of these costs, putting more money back into the business.

Customer and staff data is safe

This is becoming a bit of a big deal, you can even get an insurance policy to cover your tail is you mess it up. Storing critical customer data in the cloud can actually be safer than on paper - No more filing cabinets to rifle through on a whim. It can also provide a legally-enforceable audit trail that shows every action taken with a document, including who signed what, when and where. By going paperless, you may find it easier and more cost-effective to meet strict compliance regulations for your industry.

So there you have it, not a case I would take to the grand jury to convince a jury of my peers that going digital is the only way to go for their businesses, but certainly a logical and pragmatic argument for it. There are a heap of great services out there who can offer you a solution in this space, you should check some of them out if you are thinking of getting some more information about it all.

As a benchmark, checkout what we have built specifically for the Traffic Management industry - you can try it out for free at www.intranet.systemisedby.design