Staying Smart When Going Green with Paperless Documentation

It’s almost a business’s obligation to try and stay green with all the environmental benefits that have been presented.

Going paperless definitely helps enterprises become greener, and document management software assists a company in becoming more organized in the process. Combining green and paperless goals can create a stable and smooth work environment that both employees and consumers may appreciate.

Determine the necessary tools and stick with them

TriplePundit suggested businesses discover what kind of goals and green values they have before figuring out which processes are going to change. An enterprise should determine the footprint it’s leaving, then discover the steps to take to eliminate that footprint. It will most likely discover that paper is a huge factor holding it back from becoming green.

PCMag added that a business should pick a document management software solution and stay with it. Even if a system is as simple as using document imaging to scan reports into a computer, the company needs to make a routine of the process.

Any system a business uses should be digitally backed up and have some level of automation. The source mentioned that different systems have different automation processes—some tagging paperwork automatically and others integrating with other programs that the company might use alongside the software.

Go green and be honest about it 

Any company going paperless should keep up with its data and what the system is doing for them. TriplePundit highlighted “The Seven Sins” of greenwashing, which is a list of sins an enterprise can commit by claiming it is green.

One of the sins is the sin of no proof, which means a business that claims it’s green has no proof of it. However, this is easy to avoid for a company that is transitioning to paperless. If the enterprise just keeps track of how much paper it’s using before and after it changes over, it can advertise those statistics to its customers and be proud that it’s being true to its word.

Another big part of the transition to paperless is creating workflows that will make employees comfortable with using digital documents, according to PCMag. As the source put it, this means finding small actions that can help the business in the long run in a big way.

For example, employees saving receipts digitally can become a great habit for a company going paperless. It’s a small advancement, but it can be extremely helpful for a company later on.

Going paperless also means going green, but for a company to prove that, it has to keep track of its processes. Keeping track of the transition to digital documentation can help a business stay honest and make employees and customers comfortable during the change.