In a previous blog post, we explored the areas where your company may be experiencing unnecessary costs associated with paper. The extra costs we identified were:
- Storage
- Office supplies
- Labor
- Increased payment times
So, now that we’ve seen where your business may be losing money, it’s time to consider how going paperless can save you money. One of the tools to get you on the right track toward a paperless office is a document management solution.
We’ve compiled a list of questions to help you start identifying the costs associated with your current, paper-based processes in order for you to see the savings and return potential that document management can provide.
- How many hours does your organization currently spend filing documents?
- How many people are involved?
- Are these people centralized or dispersed throughout your organization?
- How much time is required to locate documents?
- What is the potential impact or cost of a lost document in terms of revenue, liability, or legal exposure?
- What is the annual cost of postage, paper, and labor for mailing documents?
- What is the annual cost of printer supplies, maintenance, paper, and labor to print your reports?
- What is the annual cost of printer supplies, maintenance, paper, and labor to make duplicate copies of your documents for your current processes?
- How do multiple copies impact the integrity of original documents?
- Is your organization missing payment discounts?
- How much time is spent taking data from one report and entering it into a spreadsheet for analysis or management reporting?
- What would happen if a fire or other disaster occurred?
- How much square footage is used to store infrequently accessed paper?
- Do you have off‐site backup of paper files? What does this cost?
- Does off‐site backup require you to have 2 copies of each piece of paper?
- What is the labor cost of locating missing documents?
- What is the potential exposure of missing documents from an audit?
The cost savings for your business are substantial, especially when factoring in the gains in efficiency, as well as the reallocation of time previously spent by employees doing tedious manual data entry, searching for lost documents and scanning or copying paperwork.
We encourage you to take the time to examine where your company could save money by answering the above questions and calculating your potential return associated with the implementation of a document management solution.
Happy ROI-hunting!
by MetaViewer Paperless ERP for Microsoft Dynamics