As millions of teams continue to work from home or dispersed between home and office, employees are still discovering new ways to collaborate with their colleagues and engage with customers from afar. Fortunately, with today’s powerful mobile technology and an abundant variety of business apps, businesses of any size can connect their employees by making the shift to fully digital — and 100 percent paperless.
If you’re still undecided about taking your business paper-free, here are the 10 reasons you should make the change in 2021, to reap the benefits for years to come:
1. Speed up business processes
Going paper-free lets your business move faster — wherever you’re working from. With digital forms and electronic signatures, you no longer need to print documents, manually set up appointments or file away hard copies. Digital invoices spare you the cost of having forms professionally printed and mailed. By accepting electronic payments and sending digital checks, you can tightly control cash flow without having to worry about running to the bank to make a deposit.
2. Meet customer demands for speed and service
Speeding up your business processes benefits both your organization and your customers. Delivering documents to customers’ inboxes shows them that you value their time, allowing them review these materials at their leisure and sign electronically. Customers prefer self-service for simple interactions, such as placing orders, finding company information and filling out online forms. They’ve come to expect this convenience and look for businesses that can provide it.
3. Create a smoother workflow for your staff
How much of your staff’s time in the office was spent chasing paper? Cumulatively, hours are lost completing routine manual tasks like printing documents, ensuring customers fill them out, scanning the completed forms, attaching those files to digital records and then filing those papers away. That busywork takes your team away from higher-value interactions. By embracing a total digital transformation, your team will have more time to spend on customer service and satisfaction. Digital processes also allow you to automate routine tasks and collaborate with team members more easily.
4. Save on supplies, storage and shredding
Add up what you spend each year on paper, ink, printer maintenance, file storage and shredding services. You might be surprised at the total. Embracing an all-digital, paperless workflow frees up money you can use for more critical business needs.
5. Be kinder to the environment
Roughly half of business waste is still physical paper. American offices use 12.1 trillion sheets of paper annually, according to The World Counts, which tracks environmental statistics. By conserving paper, you’ll lower your carbon footprint, which is also a selling point for some customers.
6. Ensure greater accuracy
This benefit is twofold. When customers can fill out forms at their leisure, they’re more likely to enter their information carefully and accurately. On the staff side, using a digital workflow lessens the risk of incorrect data entry or misfiled documents.
7. Offer more security
A digital workflow allows you to store documents in the cloud, which is safer than keeping private and sensitive files in an office. Encryption and multilayered mobile security protect digital documents, restricting access to authorized users only. Unlike paper files, digital files stored and backed up to the cloud can’t be damaged by a natural disaster.
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8. Expand your ‘office’
Using mobile technology to go paperless empowers employees who are on the go. If you have field-based team members visiting customers or making deliveries, they can rely on rugged mobile devices to keep them connected with the main office. Rugged devices like the Samsung Galaxy Tab Active3 and Galaxy XCover Pro are designed to work in harsh conditions, including water and dust, indoors or out. Your “office” can be fully mobile, and you can execute contracts, complete purchases and email receipts all from a single device.
9. Become nimbler
Digital forms also provide greater flexibility than printed paper. On mobile devices, digital forms can be instantly updated from a central portal, ensuring all team members are aligned on the updated requirements. And with automated workflows, a work order or report can be easily routed to the right person for follow-up.
10. Allow easier information access and collaboration
With their paperwork entirely digital, team members can create, edit and update files more efficiently. And because data and reports can be accessed by all authorized personnel at any time, collaboration is easier than ever, no matter where your team is working from.
Explore exclusive business pricing, financing and trade-in options and other deals on everything from phones and tablets to monitors and memory. If your team often works in a chaotic environment, discover how military-grade rugged mobile devices are built to withstand even the toughest conditions.
