Should your office go paperless? Office printing often results in high amounts of paper waste that ends up in landfills and harms the environment. Paperless offices reduce paper waste by limiting the use of paper to essential tasks. At WiZiX Technology Group, we help businesses become more environmentally friendly by offering streamlined technology that makes it easy to reduce paper waste. Today we’re exploring the advantages and disadvantages of a paperless office.
Four Paperless Office Advantages
1. Reduce Your Carbon Footprint
If you’re looking to make your office greener, then going paperless is a good place to start. According to the EPA, paper waste made up the largest percentage of all municipal solid waste in 2018. The greenhouse gases that the process of manufacturing paper and paperboard products produce contribute to global warming, so using more paper than necessary is very harmful to the environment. Reducing the amount of paper waste that your office produces helps reduce your carbon footprint by creating less demand for paper production.
2. Strengthen Document Security
Offices that handle sensitive data can significantly benefit from going paperless. It’s difficult to keep track of where physical documents end up and who has access to them. By switching to an electronic document management system (DMS), your office can efficiently monitor and authorize access to all documents, ensuring that sensitive information remains securely protected.
3. Find and Retrieve Documents More Easily
Going paperless with an electronic document management system also saves time by making document retrieval much more efficient. When physical paper documents become lost or need to be shared, you will need to print more copies. If your office ends up with more physical copies than necessary, many of those documents will needlessly end up in the trash.
With a DMS, you can easily search for and retrieve documents using relevant keywords, even if someone mislabels the file. You can also easily and securely share those documents with employees and clients via the DMS, so you can save printing physical documents for the times when you absolutely need them.
4. Save Money on Storage and Supplies
Going paperless not only saves valuable time, it also saves your business money. Committing to using less paper means spending less money on storage space and orders of paper supplies. Saving money and space will leave you more room in both your budget and your office to upgrade your machines or hire new employees, leading to better efficiency and greater success.
Are There Any Disadvantages of Going Paperless?
The main disadvantage of going paperless is that technology can be prone to malfunctions and failures. Software inevitably crashes, and hardware becomes outdated or wears down. However, investing in the right document management system can save you that headache. If your DMS regularly backs up your data, then you can easily restore it in the event of a technological disaster.
Paperless Document Management for California Businesses
If you would like to transition to a paperless office, it’s time to make the switch to an electronic document management system. WiZiX Technology Group in California is a proud reseller of DocuWare, a highly secure DMS that enables efficient document organization. Call 888-977-4220 today to speak with a representative about what DocuWare can do for you.
Images used under creative commons license – commercial use (12/17/2021). Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash