Would a paperless office be a good option for your business? Since March more and more people are now spending at least some of their working week at home. While some homes might benefit from a dedicated office or study, for many this is not an option. The less space required for a workspace, the happier your staff will be. Moving towards a paperless office is a great space-saving option. Also, if all the information your staff need is on the cloud rather than in filing cabinets in an office, this will help improve productivity – how much time is spent looking for physical files? One other great benefit of becoming paperless is the positive impact on the environment – how much paper ends up in your office bins or shredder bucket at the end of each day?
This article gives you a few tools you can use to help your business run better with a remote workforce and save money by using less paper & printing resources.
Go paperless with Note-taking Apps
Taking notes electronically is a great first step to a paperless office. There are a number of great cross-platform apps. You can even share notebooks between team members.
By using touchscreen devices and pens, you can convert handwritten comments to typed notes, if you want to.
The great benefit of a note-taking App such as OneNote or EverNote is that your important notes are always available, no matter where you are.
To-Do and Project Management Apps
Is there a pad of Post-it notes on your desk? They are a great way to remind you of a task, but, how do you prioritise them or track progress?
As an alternative, you could consider a To-Do app like Sticky Notes from Microsoft or a Project Management app like ClickUp.
E-signatures
Would you print a document in your office just to sign it? By using tools such as DocuSign or Adobe Sign, ink on paper is no longer the only way to provide a signature.
Cloud-based File Storage
There are now many options of on-line file storage. If you are using Office365 or G Suite, you will already have access to online storage. Do you print or email copies of the same document to your colleagues for comments and updates? It’s so much easier to direct people to the actual on-line original file to work on together.
If a document is filed on the cloud as soon as it is created, they don’t then need to be put into a filing cabinet for future reference – think how much time this could save your team!
Scan Business Cards
There are many options to scan business cards rather than keeping a pile of them in your desk drawer. There are even some apps which automatically save the detail into your address book. ABBYY and Microsoft Office Lens are just two of the many options you have to choose from.
Also, have you considered changing your own physical business card to an e-card?
Does a paperless office sound like an option for you?
It is not as hard as you may think – I have managed to transition to a paper-free working environment and have really seen the benefits.
Would you like some help with working towards a paperless office? If so, contact me, I could help you achieve your goal.