Concerns in Creating a Paperless Office

Identified as a key trend of the future and a way to improve business efficiency, the idea of a “paperless” office (or more realistically, a “less paper” office) is spreading relatively slowly. Why is that?

Articles have been written about a paperless office for decades, but many businesses are hesitant to take the plunge to paper-free processes, despite being well aware of the advantages.

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According to a recent study conducted by AIIM, respondents had many concerns about switching to a paper-free process. Let’s look at some of the most common concerns and explore potential solutions.

“We require physical signatures.”

Obtaining signatures is a necessary reality of conducting business. However, it is possible to digitally sign the types of documents and forms you’re using in your company right now.

Using Webdocs Creation & Delivery, you can capture a digital signature (that is contractually-binding and legally acceptable) and apply it to all kinds of documents – invoices, bills of lading, proofs of delivery, documents generated from your ERP system, etc.

Digital signatures will not only save money on printing and paper costs, but help speed up the decision-making process, raise productivity and streamline your daily operations!

“Documents and forms will be filed less reliably than paper.”

According to a study by Coopers and Lybrand, it costs $20 to file a paper document (the traditional way) and $120 to retrieve a paper document that has been misfiled.

Using document management systems, multiple search keys are applied to each document making it easy to find the information or file you need quickly. With Webdocs, you can customize up to 10 search keys for each document – and later search based on document type, title, date and more.

How do we make sure users follow one system for entering data? You can create controls such as field enforcement (ensuring dates are entered MM/DD/YYYY) and database validation to ensure people are inputting good data in the correct way.

“High capital investment in scanning/capture technologies are required to go paperless.”

Any Twain- or Kofax-compliant scanner can capture and digitize documents using Scan Workstation. That means, it’s possible existing equipment in your office will work with the software – or, you can choose from major scanner brands like Canon, Epson, Fujitsu, HP, Panasonic, Xerox and many more to get your business electronically filing documents in no time!

“The scanned/captured data could be difficult to read, resulting in mistakes.”

Fortra document management solutions utilize intelligent data capture solutions to identify documents that need human intervention when scanning, and automate the ones that don’t. Using powerful optical character recognition tools, you can capture all the important information from each document you scan, including customer name, address, invoice numbers and more.

Time to take action

The concerns in creating a paperless office, while normal, don't hold water when we look at the way document management solutions actually work. It's time to take the plunge and go paperless.