Your filing cabinets may not look like trees. But they are. The typical four-drawer file cabinet holds 20,000 sheets of paper. A Coopers & Lybrand study shows that the documents in that file cabinet will be copied an average of 19 times. What does this mean? Replacing just one file cabinet with a document scanning and document management system will save the equivalent of a 70-foot tree. Replacing all of the paper documents in an office with a workflow automation system will not only help save the environment, but also:

• Save time, money and space;
• Boost efficiency; and
• Improve your business processes and workflow

The environmental cost of paper

According to the Association of Information and Image Management (AIIM), businesses use millions of tons of paper every year, with the average worker printing 10,000 pages per year, including 1,410 wasted pages.

That paper ads up: in the United States, we use enough office paper each year to build a 10-foot-high wall that’s 6,815 miles long, or the distance from New York to Beijing.

Add in the environmental costs of manufacturing, transporting and storing that paper, and the environmental costs are even more staggering. A 2007 State of The Paper Industry Report by the Environmental Paper Network estimated that cutting office paper use by just 10% would be the equivalent of taking 280,000 cars off the road and reduce greenhouse gases by 1.6 million tons.

The benefits of document scanning and web-forms

Document scanning, web-forms and document management are excellent for the environment, and they have many other benefits as well:

• Efficiency, accessibility and security are enhanced, because scanned documents and web-forms are never lost, borrowed or unavailable for any reason, and information is protected, safe and secure. The mistakes and wasted time of manual data entry are eliminated, and audit preparation and regulatory compliance are simplified. Because critical files can be accessed remotely at any time from a computer with a web browser, information is instantly available whenever and wherever it’s needed.
• Storage needs plummet: Instead of file cabinets and boxes taking up space (and filled with paper documents that can take hours or days to find), information is at the fingertips of everyone who needs it. Documents never have to be physically retrieved, eliminating both the time and cost of finding critical information. That savings is huge: AIIM research shows that the average time per day spent looking for paper documents, document files, emails, intranet and web pages is 51 minutes, compared to the seconds it takes to find and retrieve an electronic document.
• Web-forms eliminate the need for paper completely and allow captured data to automatically flow into other applications used by your human resources and accounting departments, management team, or anyone else in your organization. No paper changes hands, no information needs to be rekeyed, and information gets where it needs to go instantly.
• Workflow automation, which can use both web-forms or scanned documents as data sources, increases the efficiency of business processes, such as cutting late payments by 50% in accounts receivable, according to the AIIM.

A document management system can be implemented quickly and easily with little or no capital outlay, and return on investment is usually realized in a short three to six months.

Be Green. Save green.

As April 22, the 41st Earth Day, approaches, companies are examining the ways they can reduce their impact on the environment. A document management system that includes scanning of existing documents, web-forms to capture data, and workflow automation can reduce your company’s impact on the planet while boosting efficiency, saving time and money, and helping your bottom line. It’s a win-win for your company, your employees and your planet.