Paper productivity gains.

It won’t come as a surprise to anyone that better control of your business documents is a sensible strategy for any business. We know that, it’s fairly obvious but do we really understand all of the benefits or indeed the costs of not managing paper.

Sometimes we just can’t see the wood for the trees!

 

Paper issues may appear trivial to business owners and that's because we’re so used to being so swamped in paper that we don’t see or understand the negative implication that poor management of paper can have. We’re complacent about paper because it’s always been there.

According to a survey by YouGov, the UK’s small and medium-sized enterprises waste more than £42.2 million per day in revenues looking for documents, something that could easily be remedied by creating a ‘paperless office’. Despite this, 65% of UK SMEs have still not taken this step.

 

All businesses can struggle with productivity, an area where small gains are huge victories. Big business have the power to make significant infrastructure investments and also have people focused purely on process improvement.

Smaller businesses however have the potential for much bigger productivity gains which can be delivered much quicker due to their agile nature. Productivity improvement does not have to come with big financial investment, smaller businesses should focus on small process improvements and therefore managing paper better has to be top of the pile.

Make sure you set the right expectation, work towards a "Less Paper" office rather than a "Paper Less" office - isolate each paper process and improve it. Document scanning and management has got to be one of the easiest ways to introduce process improvement.  

A bit about compliance.

Regulatory compliance is not optional for your business but it might not be the burden that you think it is. 

"Take advice, know your obligations and make provision. Why take a risk."

Managing your business documents digitally will not automatically make you compliant with the increasing burden of regulatory rules and document retention requirements but it will make it easier.

The cost of compliance both in terms of effort and the risk of failure should you be fined can be greatly reduced by the better management of your documents and making them digital is without doubt the best way forward.

Whatever your business obligations are digitising your important business documents will allow you to:

1. -          Increase your information security
2. -          Reduce costs associated with document storage and document retrieval.
3. -          Enable you to quickly and easily present documents on demand.
4. -          Develop and execute document retention policies.
5. -          Easily audit your records.

“Technology cannot make you compliant but the right technology will help you”

Make sure you have the right scanning and document management technology to take care of your business documents but the lesson here is that no amount of technology will make you compliant – the only way you can be compliant is to have the correct policies, procedures and most importantly the people who understand them.