When considering the many costs that an organisation has to expend, one of the most misunderstood is that of printing costs.

The Gartner Group estimates that as much as 30% of organisations' print costs can be eliminated with simple technology solutions.

The Business World is a rapidly changing entity, and technology helps adapt to these changes quickly and will help a company keep its competitive advantage. Paper has always been an inefficient medium for conducting business processes, and recently has become a key focus for Business Process Improvement (BPI) initiatives. So what are the main reasons for a company or organisation to move towards the paperless environment?

Below are the two main categories:

1. Operation Efficiency and Business Process Improvement

Using a digital repository can improve productivity. This is an obvious benefit. Any time you can reduce the time required to perform a required task, that time can be applied elsewhere. A basic online search for a customer file requires about 5 seconds. To accomplish the same information lookup with a physical file cabinet can take 10 – 25 minutes, or perhaps even days if the file is held in off-site storage. This is just for basic lookups, and not complex searches, which could take weeks if performed through the physical file system.

2. Risk Reduction

An ECM/DM system allows for the backup of critical files. What would happen to an organisation if their file room was destroyed by a fire or flood? Business Continuity Planning is a critical theme today, allowing an organisation to insure that a disaster of any kind will not bring business to a halt. Scanning paper files provides the ability to backup and restore key business documentation.