6 Easy Steps to Reduce Your Office’s Paper Use
With the dawn of a new year, it’s a good time to start fresh and assess your business’s efficiency. One of the most straightforward ways to cut costs and streamline operations in the long haul is to reduce the amount of paper your company uses.
Many businesses, of all sizes, have a desire to reduce their dependence on paper, but don’t quite know where to start with the project. Here are some of the most common ways that businesses who use a lot of paper can cut back:
- Printed Internal and External Communications: Email, Faxes, Memos, Reports;
- Forms;
- Billing – Receipts, Record Keeping
- Client & Customer Information
Here are some basic steps to ensure a smooth reduction in the amount of paper that your business uses. Of course, your individual experience may vary, but use these ideas as a starting point for your business.
1. Do some research and accounting to accurately determine your company’s paper usage.
To assess where your organization needs to go, you should first know where you currently stand. Pull invoices, receipts, whatever you can wrangle up to figure the most accurate figure as you can for your company’s paper use over the past year.
2. Take a bit of time to do a paper use audit.
Make a list of all the daily, weekly, and monthly tasks that would generally require printing and document storage.
Use that to see where you could potentially ‘trim the fat,’ and set realistic goals for paper reduction within a given timeframe.
3. Assess software that can help your business reduce your printed document needs, and start testing it on a trial basis.
File formats such as PDF and TIFF are a simple way to bring your office’s record-keeping into the modern era.
PEERNET offers a variety of easy-to-use, yet powerful software products that make it simple for your employees to get on the bandwagon. Product offerings range from more basic, entry-level functionality (like TIFF Image Printer, for example, a simple way to create TIFF files on your computer), ranging up to Document Conversion Service, the high-volume enterprise solution for converting a variety of document types to TIFF, JPG, PDF and other popular image formats automatically.
Check out our software page to determine which product might be right for you and your business.
4. Get your colleagues on board.
Your paper reduction program can only be as successful if your staff really buys in to the idea. Establish some sort of incentives or rewards at different checkpoints throughout the year; people always take more interest in a project like this when there’s the potential to be rewarded for their cooperation.
If you’re not the ultimate decision-maker at your organization, prepare a clear outline and plan to present to the higher-ups to ensure that they are buying into the paper reduction philosophy and action plan.
5. Track your results.
Check back at the specified date to see whether your goals have been achieved, or why you may have fallen short. Adjust your plan, or employees’ behaviour appropriately.
6. Commit to enterprise document digitization software that can reduce your office’s paper dependence.
Once you find the software that’s right for you, complete the transition within your company.
Get Started with Reducing Your Paper Use.
PEERNET’s range of document conversion software gives your business the tools it needs to smoothly transition into a new era of reduced paper use at the office. From basic tools to full-featured, enterprise solutions, we have a product that fits the size and needs and your business. Trial downloads are available for all products, so there’s no commitment until you’re sure that the software is right for the needs of your business.
