With remote work becoming the new normal for many businesses, employees are having to find novel ways to complete the tasks that used to be done in the office or face-to-face. This means getting used to not having a scanner and copier nearby your desk, no longer being able to walk into the boss’ office to get her signature on a sales contract, as well as finding alternative ways to collaborate with colleagues and engage with customers.

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Fortunately, today’s powerful mobile technology and an abundant choice of business apps means going all digital and 100-percent paperless is easily within reach for businesses of any size.?If you’ve thought about making your business paper-free, here are 10 reasons to take the plunge as you respond to the COVID-19 business environment.

1. Speed up business processes
Going paper-free allows your business to move faster – and this was true even before work-from-home orders were put in place. By using digital forms that streamline processes and switching to electronic signatures, you save time on printing documents, setting up in-person appointments and storing hard copies. With digital invoices, you don’t have to spend money on professionally printed forms or send paper documents by snail mail. By accepting electronic payments and sending out digital checks you can tightly control cash flow and don’t have to worry about running to the bank to make deposits.

2. Meet customer demands for speed and service
Speeding up your business processes will benefit both your organization and your customers. Delivering documents to their inboxes, allowing them to review them at their leisure and enabling electronic signatures shows customers that you value their time. Customers prefer self-service for simple interactions (such as placing orders, finding company information and filling out online forms). They demand convenience and look for businesses that can provide it.

3. Create a smoother workflow for your staff
How much of your staff’s time in the office was spent chasing paper? Employees spend time printing documents, ensuring customers fill them out, scanning in the completed papers, attaching those files to digital records and then filing those papers away. That busywork takes your employees away from more high-value interactions. By embracing?digital workplace transformation, ?your team can spend time instead on customer service and satisfaction. Digital processes also enable automation for routine tasks and make team collaboration much easier.

4. Save money on supplies, storage and shredding
Add up what you spend each year on paper, ink, printer replacement and maintenance, file storage, and professional shredding services. You might be surprised at the total. Embracing a paper-free, all-digital processes frees that money to be spent on more critical needs.

5. It’s kinder to the environment
Roughly half of business waste consists of paper, and U.S. offices use 12.1 trillion sheets of paper annually, according to?The World Counts, an organization that tracks statistics about the state of our planet. By avoiding paper, you’ll feel better about your impact on the planet and it may even be a selling point that appeals to your customers.

6. Ensure greater accuracy
This benefit is twofold. On the customer side, if they can fill out forms at their leisure when it’s most convenient, there’s a greater chance they’ll enter information more carefully and accurately. On the staff side, digital files and workflow make it less likely information will be manually keyed in incorrectly or that documents will be misfiled.

7. Offer more security
A digital workflow allows you to store documents in the cloud, which is safer than keeping private and sensitive files in an office. Encryption and?layers of security protect ?digital documents, and access can be restricted to only individuals with authorized access. Unlike paper files, digital files stored and backed up to the cloud can’t be harmed by fires or natural disasters.

8. Expand your “office”
Using?mobile technology to go paperless ?helps empower employees who are on the go. If you have field-based team members visiting or making deliveries to customer locations, they can rely on rugged mobile devices, like the?Samsung Galaxy Tab Active Pro or Galaxy XCover Pro, to stay connected with the office. Rugged tablets and smartphones are designed to work in harsh, wet or dusty conditions, indoors or out. Your “office” can be contained on the mobile device and you can execute contracts, complete purchases and email receipts from just one device.

9. Become more nimble
Digital forms also provide greater flexibility than their printed equivalents. Forms accessed on mobile devices can be instantly updated from a central portal, so that all team members are aligned on the new requirements. Automated workflows can also be implemented, so that work orders or reports are instantly routed to the right person for follow up.

10. Allows easier information access and collaboration
Since your paperwork is entirely digital, reports and data can be accessed by all authorized personnel at any time from any location. This allows for easier collaboration between team members, and makes it quicker to create, edit and update files as necessary.

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