Some Of The Biggest Benefits Of Going Paperless

Julie Starr • May 20, 2020



When it comes to creating a more sustainable office, there are few steps are beneficial to the environment as going paperless. From taking that single step, you can cut out up to 60% of the waste produced by the average office environment. However, there are benefits well beyond the environmentally friendly nature of paperless business. Here, we’re going to look at other benefits and how they affect your bottom line, customer satisfaction, and more elements that can make or break your business.

It saves a lot of money

Aside from cutting down on your waste, going paperless also cuts down on your reliance on physical resources that can be, above all else, expensive. When your business runs on paper, it also runs on the need for printing technologies. As such, you need to purchase not only the paper, but the printer, ink, and toner. Furthermore, you are likely to purchase a scanner to make sure you have a digital backup of your most important files. All of this can be very costly and they’re not one time costs, either. You are even going to need to pay for printer and scanner maintenance, repair, or replacement, as some point down the line. While going paperless isn’t cost-free, due to the need for storage devices and (in most cases) Cloud backup, it tends to be a lot more cost-effective.

You can free up a lot of space in the office

Not only do you have to purchase all the resources for printing those documents, but when you have a lot of paper, you need to spend even more money on storage. However, that storage doesn’t only take up funding, it also takes up space in the office. Filing cabinets are far from small, too. The more paper you use, the more quickly you can eat up space in your office. Having more space freed up in the office can help you space out employee workspaces , allowing them to work more productively, to reduce accidents and injuries, and generally improve their satisfaction with how they work.

It can lead to more efficient communication

Paper has long been one of the most important tools in business communication. From mailing important letters to keeping documents internally, it was all done on paper not too long ago. However, by moving to digital alternatives, you can greatly improve how your business communicates. Document templates and signature management , for instance, can help you create a consistent, professional image that applies across the whole business. It’s also a lot easier to manage and organize an email inbox and to respond to customer queries and concerns a lot faster when you don’t have to worry about posting them. More efficient communication means fewer misunderstandings and greater collaboration in the workplace.

Secure your important documents

One of the benefits of not having all of your most important documents printed on paper is that they are harder to simply snatch from the office or to lose along the way. There are some risks, of course, with digital documents. However, by investing in cybersecurity measures like encrypting important data and backing them up on Cloud storage servers, you can make them much safer than they would be if they were kept in physical form. As such, you can make sure that important business and customer data doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. When it does, it can lead to major financial, legal, and PR liability for the business. Invest in paperless storage alongside the right digital security and the chances of this happening to you will diminish tremendously.

It’s easier to organize

One of the security risks of going paperless is that important documents can simply get lost, even if no-one nefarious has taken them for their own ends. Even when you invest in organization and storage tools like filing cabinets, having too much paper will eventually make it nigh-impossible to keep track of all of the documents that you need. There’s a risk of losing track of digital files, of course. However, it’s much easier to organize and store them , and you can quickly find them by searching your hardware and Cloud storage for relevant terms, as well. This makes sure you can keep track of important documents and also reduces the time spent locating and fetching them when needed.

They allow for much more flexible work

Let’s consider the situation: you’re out of the office but you’re in the middle of talking to a client and you need a certain document with relevant information quickly. If you’re working in an office that relies mostly on paper, then you might have to drive into the office to retrieve that document or risk giving misinformation to the client, leading to potential problems down the line. If your office is paperless, however, then you’re more likely to be relying on Cloud document storage, which means you can simply go online, find the document that you need, and make sure the client gets the right information.

It’s good marketing

A lot of business owners will opt for more sustainable measures because they believe in them and they believe in their part in protecting the environment. However, there are also market motivations to go sustainable, as well. There is a growing portion of consumers that are much more concerned about doing business with those who reduce waste as much as possible. By making a commitment to sustainable work practices such as going paperless, and even publishing case studies on how your business has managed it, you can give your brand the kind of boost it needs to make a connection with customers. Fulfilling your social corporate responsibility can help you maintain your business reputation, leading to a stronger connection with your customers.

All of the benefits above can make the decision to go paperless all the more convincing. However, it’s important you keep the sustainability of it all in mind first and foremost. If you’re not committed to making the business a more environmentally friendly body, it’s easy to go back to bad habits.

4 Ways to Make Sure Your Business is as Safe as Possible

By Julie Starr • 17 Apr, 2024
If there’s one thing that all business owners have in common, it’s that you want to have a successful business that rakes in the profits. However, some business owners then start to ignore the importance of safety in the workplace. Having a safe business is integral to the health of your employees which in turn, affects the success of your company. And, when it’s overlooked or not implemented properly in your business, you’re actually risking how well your business functions. Not having the right business safety protocols in place can and will affect productivity, cause injuries, cause losses, and even put you at risk of major action being taken against you in a courtroom. So, if you want to make sure that doesn’t happen to you, take a look at these safety tips that you should implement into your business. Have clear equipment safety procedures If you run a business within an industry that uses machinery for things like manufacturing and construction, then it’s so important to make sure you put in place some safety guidelines to govern the use of that equipment . Make sure that the safety guidelines are clear and very easy for everyone to understand, and without the risk of any confusion from anyone on your team. And remember to make sure that the machinery is only used for its intended purpose. Doing that can help you avoid any operational misuse that could end up in someone getting hurt. Also, there are lots of pieces of machinery like forklifts that need the user to have special training. So, if you allow someone to use machinery without the necessary training, you’re putting their health and safety at risk, not to mention the lawsuit that could be filed against you. That’s why it’s important to make sure your equipment and machinery safety procedures are clear for all to see at all times. Make sure there are clear safety rules Alongside making sure that your machinery and equipment safety rules are always in clear view, you will also need to make sure you publish important business safety rules. You’ll need to think about everything, from safety compliance to health, and you’ll need to make sure all of those rules are alway available to your employees. If you’re unsure on what’s compliant in your industry, or you simply want to make sure you’re not missing a trick, you can use isnetworld compliance assistance to make sure you’re running things how you should be. And, where necessary, these rules should be placed in multiple locations of the workplace to make sure all employees and any visitors are aware of your safety procedures. You should also make sure you’re regularly reviewing and updating these rules and procedures and let your team members know what changes have been made, even if they’re only minor changes. Make everyone accountable for each other’s safety While it’s important for you to make sure you, your team, and anyone else that visit’s your business location are safe at all times, there’s only so much you can do. Everyone needs to be held accountable for their own safety, so it’s important for you to create a culture of awareness in the workplace. You’ll need to start by encouraging them to follow the rules you’ve put in place, and you can do this by giving them the equipment and materials they need to work in a safe manner. You should also encourage everyone to be accountable for others safety as well, and this can be done by making sure safety equipment is left in the right place, or by making sure things are cleaned after use to prevent any damage. For example, making sure knives in the kitchen are cleaned well and not left somewhere that could be dangerous to the next person in the kitchen, such as the sink. Provide first aid training Finally, if your business uses any type of machinery or equipment where someone could get hurt, you should always have someone on hand to provide first aid if needed. That’s why it’s a good idea to make sure everyone has first aid training in case something does happen. There are loads of first aid training companies out there that can come in and teach your team members as a group, and they will certify them afterwards to show they’ve learned what they need to. It might be a cost you don’t particularly want to front, but it might just save the life of you or one of your workers.

Defending Your Business Against Fraud

By Julie Starr • 16 Apr, 2024
Fraud is unfortunately one of the most common problems that businesses of all types have to learn to deal with. If you are in charge of a business and you want to make sure that it is being kept as safe from fraud as possible, there are many steps you can take to help with that. In this post, we’ll look at a number of the main ways in which you can defend your business against fraud. All of the following things are well worth being aware of and making use of as best as you can.  Get A Fraud Partner For Payments One of the most common types of fraud that businesses can be victims of is payment fraud. With this, the problem is that payment fraud has become more and more sophisticated in general, to the point that it can be very tough to overcome or avoid this kind of fraud altogether. However, it is possible, and the solution that most businesses use is to find a fraud partner who can help, who is usually a payment processing provider who is able to protect against such attacks. That’s something you may therefore want to consider. Train Your Staff To Detect Fraud It’s best if you can ensure that your staff are able to detect fraud as easily as possible, because that is going to mean that much less of it gets through undetected. You are not necessarily asking them to deal with the attempted fraud they spot, merely to identify it, so that it is being caught out in the early stages. That alone can make a huge difference, and should mean that you are going to have much less fraud going on in general. So training your staff is hugely important all in all. Be Preventative In every way that you try to defend against fraud , it’s best if you are being preventative rather than reactive. As long as you are doing that, it’s going to be much more effective for keeping your business safe, so this is absolutely the way that you should go about this as much as possible. Being preventative means that you are going to have a much better ability to keep your business safe from fraud, and that everyone is going to find it much easier to keep at bay. This is absolutely the focus that you should try to have. Audit Carrying out audits is another really useful thing you can do to ensure that you are defending your business as well as possible against the reality of fraud. With audits, the point is that you are going to see any potential issues that might arise early on, so that you should be able to deal with them as soon as possible. That’s something that is going to be hugely helpful, and it’s important that you are doing all you can to make use of audits as well as possible. That is going to have a huge impact in the end.
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