The benefits of going paperless are numerous. Not only will it save you money on paper costs (they add up quickly!), but it will save your employees a significant amount of time, as well as the unneeded headaches of rifling through filing cabinets and chaotic piles of documents.
With the ever growing pressure on companies to reduce their carbon footprints, going paperless really is a no-brainer. However, while the benefits are clear, the process of going paperless is not always easy. To help you navigate the transition, we’ve outlined three of the major obstacles that companies encounter when making the switch.
Learning a New System
You have your own way of doing things and it’s worked so far so why fix it, right? It’s common for us to get stuck in our ways. If you’re used to your existing filing system, it’s perfectly reasonable that you might be reluctant to switch.
The truth is, no matter how efficient your document filing/delivery system might be, there is an ECM solution that can streamline it. Sure it will take a little time to learn it and get it down, but with the right system, and the right expert to guide you through it, the transition will be much smoother than you think. Pretty soon you’ll be looking back in amazement at all the time you wasted sifting through physical documents.
Upfront Costs
The cost of implementing a company-wide Enterprise Content Management (ECM) strategy is probably the biggest reason many companies choose to stick with paper. While this is understandable, it might be a bit shortsighted, because if your new management system is implemented properly, it will save you a ton of money in the long run. But that may be beside the point anyway, because if you take a good hard look at your processes, you might find that you don’t need to replace every single system with an ECM workflow, but that you can pick and choose where going paperless will help most, and implement electronic solutions on a case-by-case basis.
Technophobia
Another big roadblock that keeps many from going paperless is security. With cybercrime on the rise worldwide, people like the idea of having their physical documents locked in a filing cabinet, tucked safely away from the prying eyes of would-be hackers. Cybercrime is a real threat, but so are fires, floods, natural disasters, and of course, actual crime. All you need to overcome this obstacle is education and proper training. As long as your records are properly encrypted and your employees are properly trained on all the data security protocols for your particular system, you really have less to worry about than you do with your more vulnerable physical documents.
No matter how long you try to hold out, it’s easy to see that paperless is the way of the future. And if you take a good long list at the pros and cons, all of these obstacles quickly fade away. Talk to an ECM professional today to get educated on how paperless system can benefit your company.