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Why Small Businesses Should Go Paperless
When trying to run a company, many small business owners find themselves drowning in paperwork. It’s a necessary evil, but too many companies get caught up in saving every slip of paper. If you don’t keep up with your filing system, the struggle of finding the documents you need can seriously impact your daily business operations. In order to combat the sea of disorganized paper, here’s why your small business should go paperless.
Protect the Environment
Copy paper and all the ink used to print on it are terrible for the environment. The chemicals from the production process aren’t great either. Even making small changes to reduce your paper usage can make an impact. Plus, if sustainability is important to your brand, converting all of your paper files into digital files is a great way to operate according to your core values. When potential customers who care about sustainability ask about the ways in which your company is dedicated to sustainability, you want to be able to show a list of actions you’re taking. This is also good information to have on your website.
Secure Your Data
Data security should be a real concern for more businesses, especially if they possess sensitive information. At the very least, you’re likely to have email addresses and maybe even physical addresses of your clients. It is unwise to have disorganized documents in places that are easily accessible by anyone in your company. If you experience theft, you could be putting that valuable information at risk, which is a nightmare in terms of liability. Luckily, you don’t have to handle it yourself. Secops companies are ready to help businesses integrate security and operations into one smooth process.
Save on Storage Space
If you insist on keeping paper copies of every important document your company has ever come across, you’re going to need a secure place to store it. This typically means filing cabinets, but those tend to be heavy, bulky, and take up far too much space over time. If you don’t understand the filing system, you could spend hours looking for the papers you need. If the building ever experiences fire or flooding, those important pages could be lost forever. If those papers are essential to running your business, losing them could mean serious disruptions in cash flow, if not more serious consequences. What if you want to grow your company, but aren’t in a place to get a larger building? You would have room to store more products, if not for all the filing cabinets.
Streamline Your Processes
Having any kind of physical paper in the office invites the potential for clutter, and clutter can make it difficult to locate important items, which slows down your operations and ultimately costs you money. You can automate sorting and filing tasks with software that keeps track of all your important data. That same software keeping track of your inventory can send reminders when stock is getting low as well as record information on sales transactions. When a customer makes a purchase, you can present the choice of a paper receipt, text receipt, or email receipt, making the process more convenient for them as well.
Save Money
For some companies, managing the mountain of paperwork is a full-time job. Lots of businesses have to hire office assistants just to make copies, scan contracts, file documents, and shred paper that is no longer useful. If you digitize your important data, you won’t need to hire extra people just to help manage the paperwork. Converting all of that information properly means you’ll have access to an easily searchable database, so you can pull up the information you need when you need it, with no hunting through file cabinets required.
Why suffer through mountains of paperwork if you don’t have to? Going paperless can reduce your carbon footprint, streamline your processes, and overall make your office a more pleasant place to work in.
