Moving to a completely paperless office might be a pipe dream but moving to digital away from paper forms is certainly the way to go. No one likes forms – whether they are sales invoices, purchase orders or reports. Forms get lost, damaged or incorrectly filled in. Once they are manually filed (a mammoth task in itself), they are not easy to find again, especially if they have not been filed properly. How much easier to have all this information on the Cloud, ready to be recalled at the touch of the keyboard?
According to AIIM, 2014, searchability improves by nearly 60%, there is 47% improved efficiency and of course storage space drops substantially, to around 42%, compared with physical storage of paper. Nearly a third of all businesses, again according to AIIM, are dealing with over 1,000 forms a day – that’s a lot of paperwork. Businesses need these forms, but the system falls down when they are incorrectly processed or the information cannot be found quickly.
Now you might be thinking – this is going to be expensive or; we don’t have the time to do this, or; surely inputting data is just as tedious as manually filling in forms? Of course, there has to be human interaction at the computer, but many steps may be automatically infilled. Have you ever filled in a form where you have to repeat the same information – such as your address? The computer will do this for you. And there can be drop downs for certain questions, so you don’t have to write so much. The whole form your office uses will be tailored to your needs and made as simple and easy as possible for your staff to type in. As far as expense is concerned, we are confident that you will recoup the costs in a couple of years or even months, depending on the scope of the project. If you can find the time to do this – and remember, we will be helping you all along the way – you’ll find it will pay back in terms of time saved, more accurate information and information that is safely stored, for ever.
With the increased connectivity our world now demands, forms need to be accessed everywhere, not just in the head office or with your sales teams. Digital forms may be accessed on tablet, web or mobile devices, so you have them whenever you have an internet connection (or you could download them for later use). Replacing your paper forms moves your business firmly into the 21st century and you’ll notice better control, cash savings and increased efficiency. Have a quick read of this to get more information:
