A truly paperless office has still not been possible even with today’s advancement in technology. However, the advantages of a paperless office can already be realized even if a company has not reached a 100% paperless status. Let’s take a look at the advantages and benefits of a paperless office.

Less Paper Means Reduced Cost

Probably the most important advantage of a paperless office to a company is cost reduction. A reduction of operational costs literally translates into an increase in revenues. There are many different ways that the company will be able to reduce costs and not only in the cost of purchasing paper.

A company will be able to reduce costs in purchasing and maintaining paper reproduction equipment. Reproduction equipments are quite expensive and maintenance costs are also pretty high as well. In fact, many of these equipments need maintenance contracts.

Store costs will also be reduced as well. Filing cabinets, file folders, binders and other items required to store paper documents will no longer be required. The cost of these items can be quite substantial especially in a large operation.

A company will also have more space available to their employees. In many companies, a whole room may be dedicated to reproduction. Another room is dedicated to storage, in some companies a whole warehouse is dedicated to storage.

Productivity is also increased when a company goes paperless. Employees will be able to quickly access the documents that they require. Employees in remote locations will also benefit from going paperless because they do not have to worry about instructions or important information that is printed on paper that they are not aware of.

Security is a major concern for many companies. Paper copies of memos, internal and external correspondence can easily be left lying around or worse, thrown in the trash without being shredded. In a paperless office, documents can easily be secured. Different security levels may also be applied according to the sensitivity of a certain document. Access to the database can be controlled and restricted at any time.

The human resources department is one of the departments that are affected in terms of workload when a company grows. Every employee has a corresponding employee record and a human resources department needs to keep track of different paper documents in a single employee record. If the company has thousands of employees and intends to employ hundreds more due to company growth, the human resources department will need to track thousands of documents more.

In a paperless office, employee records are all electronic thus the human resources department can easily track and update an employee record. Finance and payroll departments are also in the same boat.

A paperless office produces less paper wastes. Every year a company needs to deal with tons of paper wastes. Most of these wastes are pieces of paper that only had a temporary purpose. In a paperless office, the amount of waste paper is significantly reduced. This means that the company saves a good amount of money in the procurement of paper that is only to be used for temporary reasons.