IT at the service of Paperless

More and more companies are adopting the paperless movement. In fact, a study conducted by Coleman Parkes shows that 80% of SMEs want to reduce or even eliminate the use of paper within their organization.

The amount of paper used in the workplace has been steadily increasing in recent years. On average, a Canadian consumes approximately 50 kilograms of paper per year, or more than 10,000 sheets per year.

You must consider the direct and indirect costs associated with paper use and management. During the daily operations of your business, many documents circulate. You must take the time to find the information you're looking for and then archive the document after use. This represents time and resources invested in secondary tasks that distract staff from the important tasks of their jobs.

What are the benefits of going paperless?

• Reduction of costs and consumption
• Gain in efficiency
• Improving the internal organization of your company
• Elimination of physical storage of your documents
• Securing your information
• Savings on storage infrastructure
• Improving communication within different teams

Loss of information and documents occurs more frequently than one might think in the workplace, resulting in a slowdown or even a loss of productivity among employees.

Unless all documents are dated directly on the sheets, creating and duplicating different versions can lead to misunderstandings that hinder good communication between different teams.

How to become a paperless organization?

Making the transition to paperless requires you to opt for various IT solutions for storage, data sharing, communication, etc. This is a change that will have to be made gradually since it will completely change your working methods.

It's therefore essential to involve all your employees in this process and support them so they fully embrace the new IT tools made available to them. After all, you want to invest in solutions that will be used by your entire organization. It only takes one shirker to undo all the efforts put into this process.

IT tools that promote paperless

Electronic document archiving solutions first of all greatly reduce the accumulation of paper. There are inexpensive (or even free) solutions available depending on the size of your business and your files. These range from a simple Google Drive account shared by your entire team to more comprehensive solutions like Office 365 or G-suite.

More advanced archiving solutions like NetDocument or iManage will allow you to fully manage all your virtual documents through a user-friendly interface.

Google Calendar and Outlook will help you organize your schedule and share it with all your colleagues. Asana and Trello, cloud-based project management services, will allow you to track all stages of your projects internally.

Slack is also very popular in business as a communication tool. Plus, you'll no longer need to communicate via email, which can become a nightmare when message chains become endless.

If you're using Office 365, Teams lets you bring all these tools together under one platform, making your teams more efficient.

What should we remember about paperless and IT?

Every organization is different and has its own unique processes. Beyond the tools you adopt, it's important to make the change gradually and in an inclusive environment. Consult with your employees or colleagues and try to fully understand your processes.  There are a multitude of possible solutions and combinations that will allow you to move away from paper.

As IT consultants, Nexxo IT Solutions is here to help you achieve your paperless project. We can assist you with the selection and implementation of all these collaborative management, organizational, and communication tools.

To help you make the most of these new resources, we also offer employee training and 24/7 support after implementation, as we strive to provide the best experience for our customers.