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If you follow articles from AIIM (Association for Intelligent Information Management) you may have come across the term “paperless company” a few times. Because we understand the importance of the subject, in the post Paperless: what it is and how to take the first steps, we made a general overview of the paperless environment.
On the occasion, we commented on the reasons for having a paperless company and how you can start the transformation in your area and organization as a whole. In this new article I want to complement the topic a little more and bring more ideas to help your business reduce – and maybe eliminate – the use of paper.
But, before starting, I will propose a discussion:
What prevents transformation to a paperless company?
Instead of talking about the reasons for making the transition to a paperless company, I’ll take a slightly different approach. The reason is simple: for many people, it is impossible to think of a life without paper.
Psychology explains this with the term “haptic perception”. The word “haptic” comes from Greek and means “relative to touch”. Currently, the term designates the science of touch, which is what happens when you touch the screen of your smartphone to give a command.
When we talk about paper, many individuals like the way it makes them feel, as it brings a feeling that because it is a physical item, it is something real. For many people, information inside a computer or in the cloud doesn’t seem so real because it’s not so palpable.
This perception of the real x unreal happens at an unconscious level, and in many of us it is a belief that we do not even know we have. But the fact is that, according to haptic perception, we need to feel with touch to assimilate that such a document exists or that such a contract has really been signed.
Leaving the field of psychology, a very big barrier to transformation into a paperless company is the simple question “how?”. Every change requires efforts and I understand that it is at this point that the barrier can be great.
Transitioning to a paperless business requires discipline and more work, especially at the beginning. For example:
- Who will scan existing physical documents?
- Where will they be stored?
- How to ensure document security?
- Who will have access to them?
- How will the documents be signed?
- Will the documents have legal validity?
- How will these documents be managed?
These are just some of the questions that may arise and that can be an obstacle to the transformation into a paperless company. In order to show you that there are answers and solutions to each of your questions, check it out below.
Step by step for a paperless company
Change is hard. The first point you need to keep in mind is that the example must come from above. It’s no use for a manager with his own physical document archive to want to demand a paperless environment, right?
And for the change to make sense, it is important to present to everyone in the organization the advantages of a paperless company. About the positive aspects, you can talk about:
- Productivity gain
- Improved efficiency
- Increased security
- Environmental issues
- Corporate Governance
- Cost reduction
In the article Paperless: what it is and how to take the first steps towards the paperless era. We present more details on each point.
Once everyone understands the importance of paper reduction (and future elimination), we can move on with the steps.
Set goals
Everyone knows where they should go, which is the transformation to a paperless company. So that efforts are directed and the goal is not lost along the way, set goals.
You can, for example, set goals for each department and for the company as a whole, encouraging all employees, at different hierarchical levels, to make the transition. In order to achieve this, you can create some sort of reward for when the goal is achieved.
Whether with a reward or without, the important thing is for everyone to understand the goal and the deadline to achieve it.
Make an overview of the impressions
What is each area printing? What do I need to print? Are all prints really essential?
The answers to these questions may show that several impressions are unnecessary. For example, many people have the habit of printing emails to take a certain agenda to a meeting.
Nowadays we have cloud applications that allow you to share information in a very secure way, such as Google Docs, Evernote, and Dropbox.
Digitize what’s important
Each department made an evaluation of the printed documents. Those that can be discarded should literally go to waste. The others need to be digitized.
At this stage, the “heavier” work begins, because for some sectors the amount of documents is much greater, such as the administrative, financial and HR of a company, for example.
Create a digitalization strategy
Initially, by “strategy” I mean “habit”. Once the necessary documents have been scanned, keep in mind that this will be the procedure to follow at all times.
After that, think about the strategy itself. Here I like to talk about processes, because they are what move our companies. Imagine the following: who should read the scanned document? Will it be necessary to take any action, such as signing it electronically? What is the purpose of the document? Is there any action triggered from it?
To exemplify, here at Neomind, before we were a paperless company, a simple travel expense report needed on average – between printing and copies of invoices – three copies of 30 pages each. All this control was necessary so that we could reimburse expenses.
By eliminating paper, we created a process in which the requester fills in all the information in one system (the Fusion Platform). This information goes to the financial department that makes the check and posts the payment. The process is simple, but notice that it occurred in stages (that is, through a process), the last of which is the payment of expenses itself.
So, when creating the habit of digitizing, also think about activities that must exist for the document to follow a flow. This brings us to the final step:
Automatize
Automation is not necessarily a step that happens after another. Ideally, the paperless company should be automated at the beginning of this transformation (at the goal setting stage).
It is important to clarify that when I talk about automation I refer to document management. For you to understand: an EDM (Eletronic Document Management) software allows the user to publish and control documents securely and much more accurately than they would do manually with printed materials. What’s more, all this in one place (which means that documents will not be scattered in drawers, files and employees’ desks).
In addition, an EDM application allows you to configure approval flows for each document, as well as security settings (who can view and edit it? Who will be allowed to delete it?). Also, software keeps all actions recorded, which means that no user can change or delete a document without anyone knowing about what happened.
Finally, every paperless company needs to ensure that documents are stored legally and with legal validity, and this is also a characteristic of good EDM systems.
Concluding
Once you’ve completed the paperless step-by-step guide and seen how it works in practice, you’ll realize that with time and cost savings – as well as improved document security – your employees, customers, and the company as a whole will benefit from the change.
Many organizations already know how heavy it is to have to store and control piles of documents. However, there are few that really make a greater effort in this direction. Observing digital transformation trends, we have seen that the elimination of paper is among them.
Will your company be left behind or will it take action? To continue the discussion, we recommend reading the text: What Document Management does for your company: from workflow organization to paperless environment.
How about starting digital transformation now? Get to know Fusion here.
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