Going paperless seems like an herculean task given that quite a number of tools are required for the implementation to take place, examples include scanners, a document management system, Computers and Labour (if outsourced) or time (if internal employees) to handle the process. Digital transformation does not have to be expensive after all. There are tools that are cost effective enough and can be customised and used in the managing and storage  of digital documents. 

There are a number of reasons which might be ignored that going paperless will be able to eliminate in the long run. These are factors that frequently occur but we tend to brush aside and continue with business as usual.

One of the reasons is the safety of your important documents. As your documents keep on compiling and this includes also the important documents all you have to do is buy more files and filing cabinets for storing them. These documents are accessed by different personnel. You may even decide to lock the important files in a different secured room. Do you have time to monitor who went into that room? Was the person the authorised personnel or another personnel who is not authorised? How high is the possibility of the confidential and important documents being stolen? The documents may not even be safe from natural disasters such as flooding or even fire. Would it not be better if these documents were kept in the digital format whereby anybody accessing them can be monitored.

The second reason is how productive are the employees?If they spend most of their productive hours searching for documents when required. The documents may have piled up as the years go by and yet the documents are still in use. During an audit, it takes a while to search for the required documents. This can be made easy if the documents are in digital format whereby the auditors can easily access the documents. It leaves the other personnel to continue with their productive work. And the auditor can do his work with ease.

What if a document is misplaced,how much time are employees spending on searching for the misplaced documents?That is non productive time.

The third reason is the impact of having paper documents on the operation cost?With files and file cabinets of paper documents obviously you need space for these documents which means either you lease more office space or look for a place to store them. There are certain instances where you may even get a room in your house to store them. How much more would it cost you? How expensive is your office space? This means more expenditure for non productive purposes.There is no return on investment on the acquired space for storing paper documents. 

As you are creating more paper documents. There is additional purchase of paper, Box Files, folders and cabinets? The dent this causes on your overhead cost is quite high, especially now when companies are working on minimising their operation cost due the economic downturn.If you were to go paperless the cost of leasing office space would be reduced or the space used for a more productive activity. The money being used on the paper consumables, cost of ink cartridges used to produce prints and copies,cost of pens, printer maintenance and other office costs related to paper staples, paper punch etc would be diverted for other income generating purposes.

The fourth reason is the impact of using paper on the environment. The more paper we use the more trees go down. If we were to use less paper it would mean minimal cutting down of trees for the purpose of producing paper.What about the organisation’s environmental impact with using less paper, minimising cost spending less on consumables? If most of the organisation’s would do this the impact can be huge.

The fifth reason is with the paper documents, how high are the human errors? An example is the document versioning where different versions of a document have been created. The possibility of using a wrong document version is high especially when logged in wrongly. It may cause accountability issues when errors occur especially when identifying the root cause of using the wrong document version in the first place. By using an electronic document management system in the going paperless journey. This kind of errors can be avoided because the versioning of documents can be tracked and also who is handling the document and what time.