As much as documents are part and parcel of running a company. They can also slow down efficiency, increase costs and pose security risks.
Are your processes still paper- heavy or you are embracing systems to realign and improve your processes?
Key Takeaways
Paper-heavy processes can be managed with the right digital tools.
Training and coaching of employees increases digital mindset adoption.
Minimizing paper-heavy processes through digitization will increase your information security.
Optimize your paperless operations to manage around paper heavy processes.
Join Our Paperless Workflow Workshop
Here’s what you will discover in the workshop
- Benefits of Paperless workflow
- Paper Heavy processes in your business.
- Tools and Strategies for digitization.
- Hands-on Interactive activity.
- How to Build and Maintain a paperless workflow.
- How to manage Change within your team and more…………
Examples of Paper-Heavy Processes
These are some of the document-heavy processes that if you are still using paper can be costing you an arm and a leg.
- Invoice processing and accounts payables: Manual data entry slows down your processes. Paper-heavy invoice processing slows down approvals and also can lead to the risk of losing invoices and inconsistencies.
- Contracts and Agreements: Printing, signing, scanning and then storing the contracts is a common occurrence in most small and medium companies. There is a waste of time and paper making the process costly in the long run.
- HR Forms and Employee onboarding: The use of paperwork in the hiring process, in payrolls and in compliance is cumbersome and time-wasting. Errors of omission and commission can be very frequent.
- In Expense Reporting: Processing paper receipts, manual approvals and reimbursements can be quite slow and time-wasting.
- Customer and Supplier Agreement: Done manually using paper documents slows down transactions and leads to a lot of time wasting.
- Internal Reports and Memos: Reports are printed and distributed manually internally. This is not cost-effective at all. Increased use of paper leads to increased unnecessary costs.
- Order Processing and Shipping Documents: Delays due to the use of paper orders and invoices. Increase in human errors.
- Legal and Compliance Records: Retaining physical paper documents for audit and legal compliance leads to an increase in physical paper storage area. The more are kept the more the area is used. It also becomes quite cumbersome to handle the accumulated documents.
- Notes and Printout for Meetings: Paper waste due to excessive printing of reports for the meeting sessions.
- Marketing and Sales: Brochures, Catalogues and proposals are continuously printed out because of the need for updated versions of the same. Paper and also time is wasted which leads to unnecessary costs.
Challenges caused by Paper-Heavy processes?
Companies that are still relying on paper documents have high operational costs, inefficiencies and high-security risks. These are caused by Document-heavy processes that are major bottlenecks to these companies. These challenges include:
#1 Large volumes of physical documents.
These documents occupy a sizable space in the workspace. Reducing the space that can be used for productive work.
Onboarding, payroll and performance reviews generate a lot of paper documents which would cause challenges in storage.
Also, paper receipts and invoices cause storage challenges.
In Engineering and construction blueprints, contracts and permits generate large amounts of paper. This can lead to difficulty in collaborating on updated plans.
#2 Risk of Losing or Misplacing Documents
Searching and retrieving documents in real time becomes more and more difficult as the paper documents pile up.
There is a risk of losing or misplacing documents as the documents pile up in the storage area. Documents tend not to be returned to their original position after retrieval. Managing and retrieval of historical records become a challenge due to piled-up paper documents.
#3 Slow Processing Speed
Contract reviewing and approvals can be lengthy, slowing down the process. Manual invoice processing can be slow and error-prone. Manual filing, especially in HR, can create compliance risks. There is a risk of losing customers’ important documents. Paper-based files can slow down response time to customer queries. Tracking customer interactions and requests becomes difficult. In the health sector, sharing information between departments tends to be slow. In insurance, processing claims manually leads to delays, and paper-based claim forms increase errors.
Tracking of contract and compliance renewals can be difficult or can be missed out altogether.
Execution of paper-based signatures can be slow and especially when signatures are required from several stakeholders. If a signatory is not within the office or has travelled then the signing has to be put on hold.
#4 Lack of Visibility in Financial Transactions.
Issues occur in version control when there is a collaboration between multiple team members.
Manual processing makes it hard to track inconsistencies. Finance team struggle hunting for missing or lost documents making things even harder.
How can we overcome these challenges?
Identifying the most document-heavy processes in your company.
In companies, the most common document-heavy processes include Invoice processing, Accounts Payables, and Accounts Receivables in the Finance department. Contract Management in Operations, Human Resource and Employee Records, Regulatory Compliance & Audit and Project Documentation.
Select the Right Digital Tools: After identifying the most document-heavy process, you can then select the right digital tools to streamline that process and eliminate the use of paper. For example, a Document Management System for digital storage. The choice depends on the size of your company.
For small companies, Google Drive, Dropbox or OneDrive. For companies with complex structures, Enterprise-level document management systems such as Docuware, and M-files would work for them. OCR (Optical Character Recognition ) tools would be required to enable searchability.
E-signatures such as Docusign or Adobe Acrobat Pro e-signature for approval without printing.
In finance, you can use financial software such as Quickbooks or Xero for invoicing and accounting. CRM for managing customers, project management, and collaboration tools for team collaboration and document tracking. And ensure that they can be integrated to ensure smooth workflow processes.
Implementation of the digital workflow: To initiate the digital document workflow, you can start either by digitizing what is currently in use and any other incoming document to ensure the workflow is not interrupted.
These documents are scanned and digitized using OCR to enable the documents to be searchable. These documents are then stored in the document management system and properly indexed. Automated reminders and approvals can be set up for invoices, reports and contracts. An e-signature tool can be set up to be used instead of printing documents and signing.
Repetitive tasks can be automated to ease data entry using AI (Artificial Intelligence) tools.
The Document Management System should be encrypted to ensure the documents are secured. An automated backup should be set up and document access controlled with policies in place. Compliance to industry-specific regulations should be adhered to.
Employee training and Adoption: Provide workshops and coaching for the employees and executives. This would encourage a digital mindset within departments.
Secure and optimize paperless operations
Conclusion
Whether you want to improve your operations, paper-heavy processes or your Financial paper-heavy processes. The ultimate solution is to minimize paper usage and automate your processes.