How to create a paperless office
Do you feel overwhelmed by the amount of paper you have laying around the office, or are you running out of space to store all your filing? It may be time to throw away your printer and move all your documents to the cloud.
Going paperless has many benefits including freeing up space, decluttering your work area and creating a more productive environment. Not only that, it also saves a ton of paper and ink, which is good for the planet and better for your wallet too. Whether you want to clear out your home office or make your company a paper-free zone, there can be benefits for all types of businesses in moving to a cloud-based document storage solution.
Going paperless – what does it mean?
Simply put ‘going paperless’ means dramatically reducing the amount of paper you use, if not doing away with paper documents altogether. Thanks to technology it is now a lot easier and more convenient to store everything digitally rather than printing and manually storing physical files.
There can be many benefits to adopting a paperless system including:
- Better document organisation. Electronic files are easier to search for and can make you more efficient.
- Faster and less expensive communication. Keeping all your client information online makes it simpler, faster and easier to communicate with all your clients.
- Data security and automatic backups. Maintaining electronic files allows for multiple backup points and means there is less chance of valuable information being misplaced or lost. And, as we have mentioned many times before, storing your files and data in the cloud is far more secure, especially when it comes to protecting your customer data.
- More environmentally friendly. Not only will you save on paper and recycling, but you may also save on space requirements and energy costs thereby decreasing your business’ overall environmental footprint.
- Increased cost savings. The cost savings of this system can be numerous, as you save on having to buy paper and ink for printing you also save on equipment such as printers and shredders. You may also save on valuable office space, as the room taken up by filing cabinets and documents will become free to use for other purposes.
How to become paperless.
Sort out your storage
If you are serious about saving space, you need a cloud provider who can offer you a secure and scalable product to ensure effective and safe storage of all our documents.
One of the benefits of storing all your documents in the cloud is that you always have a back up. No longer will you have to worry about hard drives failing and loosing all your data or having to transfer data between machines or devices.
You can read our article on the many ways that being in the cloud is better for your business.
Things to take into account when choosing your cloud provider:
- Security
- Scalability
- Backup and recovery
- Online management and control
Once you have your cloud infrastructure in place all that is left to do is decide on your filing system and get to the filing.
Scan, scan, scan
Once you have created your cloud storage directory and filing system, scan all your documents and file them accordingly.
We suggest you get in the habit of scanning your documents on a regular basis, to avoid the paper piling up.
Remember to shred all important documents before sending the paper to be recycled.
Rethink your subscriptions
Where possible opt for digital communication over snail mail. Set up your accounts to ensure that you receive statements and other types of corporate communication via email rather than by post.
Change your magazine subscriptions from hard copy to an electronic version that you can read on your PC or tablet. Get your latest news online instead of picking up the newspaper on your way to work.
Instead of sharing printed presentations and documents share digital copies or showcase your presentations from a tablet or projector. Think about what other ways your business can cut back on using physical paper documents and switch to virtual solutions.
How RSAWEB can help
No matter how big or small your needs RSAWEB has the cloud solution for you.
With scalability, backup and recovery all built in you won’t have to worry about storage or security of your documents and data.
For more information on our Cloud products contact us on [email protected] or call us on 087 470 0000.
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