The average office worker uses around 10,000 sheets of paper per year. Many of these papers are disposed of within a single day. And while this system may have worked for businesses in the past, despite significant costs and wastage, the rise in remote work and ways that digitisation benefits hybrid workplaces means that a reliance on paper is increasingly hindering productivity and growth.
Digital transformation has become a pressing need for most businesses in 2020 and beyond as we adapt to a permanent shift in the way we work. With employees distributed across a variety of work environments - from home to the office or other shared workspaces - access to company assets on any device, from anywhere and at any time is critical for the growth and resilience of organisations.
Businesses must optimise the integration of digital technology in hybrid work environments, and make fundamental changes to how they operate and deliver customer value, or risk being left behind. Central to this is maximising your shift away from paper documents and other physical assets.
Here are seven ways that digitisation benefits a robust digital transformation strategy that will reduce your reliance on paper and enable your hybrid workforce to be productive wherever they are.
1. Reduce costs
By digitising documents, you will significantly cut business costs. While you will still need to scan and archive documents using a multi-function device (MFD), implementing a digital solution will go a long way towards reducing your printing costs. You will also spend less on storage and document destruction.
2. Data at your fingertips
When your company’s information is digitally centralised and indexed in a format of your choosing, it is easy and efficient to find. Version control becomes simpler and archiving easier.
3. Save time
Digitally storing documents saves you business hours in printing, filing, storing and searching. With powerful search functions available, employees will never have to ransack the filing cabinet again.
4. Take back your office space
With fewer physical documents needing a home in your office, you can reduce your office space. Think less filing cabinets, archive libraries, manila folders and piles of paper. With all this gone and documents digitised, you can choose to only pay for spaces that will truly enable your hybrid workforce.
5. Reduce your risk
Physical documents are harder to control and less secure than their digital counterparts. Physical documentation can go missing, be stolen, copied, emailed without trace, damaged or misused easily and quickly. Reduce the risk with catalogued digital versions.
6. Improve data security
Customisable complex access rights structure protects digitised documents from data security risks common to hybrid workplaces. Control what documents users can store, retrieve, edit, export, modify and remove from a digital repository. Document encryption ensures that only users with the correct access ‘key’ can view documents, making them unreadable even by system administrators.
7. Treat the environment right
Studies show that nearly 70 percent of office paper ends up in the bin - nearly 7000 sheets of paper per worker, per year. So, it comes as no surprise that going paperless will help the environment.
Content services platforms
If you’re looking to enable your hybrid workforce through digital solutions, a content services platform, such as an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system, is essential. A cloud-based ECM can help your business to deal with the complexity of data and the management of assets, while enabling remote employees to access the information they need any time and on any device. The digitisation benefits will prove their worth and add value to your workforce. Learn more about choosing the best ECM for your hybrid workplace here.
Building a resilient and productive hybrid work environment requires the right hardware, software and processes. Download our Guide to Hybrid Workplace Strategy for a step-by-step strategy for implementing an effective hybrid work model that equips your employees to work anywhere, any time.
