One of the most important rules for businesses is that you need to spend money to make money. You have to invest in your technology and your staff in order to grow your business and have a better chance of being successful. This is why it’s important to make the right decision when it comes to investing money back into your business. You want to ensure that every penny is spent well and that you’re not missing out on potential growth.
One of the best ways to upgrade your business is to actually go paperless. While it’s extremely difficult to get rid of every bit of paper in your office (and often pointless) there are plenty of traditional workflow processes that are far more efficient if done on a computer. For example, accounting and sending invoices is much faster and easier with a digital solution.
So in this post, we’ll be taking a look at a few ways that you can adopt a paperless workflow.
Set an example
If you want your business to go paperless then you need to set a good example for everyone else. Start by introducing paperless office policies, start buying less paper and start asking your employees to use digital solutions such as email and cloud-based technologies. You can also set limitations on things such as printing and limit office supply purchases to encourage your employees to go paperless. If you personally can’t do this, then assigning someone a secondary role to encourage their colleagues can be a good alternative.
Start as early as possible
Make sure you start as early as possible instead of waiting till you reach a certain milestone. The cost of document scanning is drastically reduced when you do it early because you have fewer documents to scan and organize. It also means you’ll be spending less money on stacks of paper, ink, and other paper-related documents. Start as early as you can and you’ll thank yourself later!
Find suitable technological replacements
It’s a good thing to remember that not everything in your office can be immediately replaced with a digital solution. For example, buying a digital notepad or drawing board isn’t a great solution for replacing note-taking. It’s extremely expensive and just isn’t practical. However, what you can do is encourage your staff to start taking notes on their smartphones or computers. Similarly, you could let customers know that you’ll be switching from paper bills and invoices to emails. This is a suitable replacement that helps you save money and doesn’t change too much about the way your business operates.
Give your customers and clients options
One of the biggest problems with adopting a paperless workflow is that it can be met with resistance from customers and clients. Some clients may require you to attach paper-based invoices or contracts, and some customers would still prefer to receive letters in the mail as opposed to emails. It’s important that you establish alternatives for customers that still want paper-based solutions, or you can slowly roll out your paperless solutions so that customers can gradually get used to it.