The benefits of this change are many including time-saving. If your business is a little behind on typing and printing the records or filling out forms manually then it could take a lot of time whereas, by going digital, you can easily save this time. Along with this, there are several economic benefits of going paperless and as more businesses would make the transition towards digital solutions, they would be getting the benefits of cost savings while becoming cleaner and greener. Let’s have a look at the financial benefits of going paperless for your business.

1. Customers Want Everything To Be Digital

Any business would want to make their customers happy and in the 21st century, you would rarely find any customer that would be interested in slow paper-based transactions. Customers find paper-based transactions to be slow, unreliable, and inconvenient in this digital age. No one wants to wait for a long time just to make transactions. Customers expect a quick and seamless experience in all aspects, whether it is interacting with your business, transactions, or any other business aspect. If you want your business to flourish, have a satisfied customer base, and more referrals from your customers then you gotta deliver on what your customers want and nowadays customers want everything to be digital because being able to access everything from their mobile phone or tablet or PC makes this an ideal and convenient choice. If you are not delivering on what your customers want and expect from you then you are basically putting your brand and business at risk.

2. Reduced Stationery Costs

It was a no-brainer for executives who realised that if they made this transition and went paperless then they could save a lot of money over time which would help increase their revenues. For a big business, there are a lot of expenses involved with the documents, including the cost of paper, buying a printer, cost of printer ink, and other factors, however, by going paperless, you are virtually saving all of this money. Plus, when you are going digital then you need to buy any paid tool to make changes or edit the documents as there are tons of free tools available for free in every digital document format out there. For instance, the most popular document format in the world, PDF has a lot of different tools available including PDF Editor, PDF Compressor, Excel to PDF Converter, JPG to PDF Converter, Word to PDF Converter, etc. A company that has a lot of clients can save a lot of money just by making invoices. It has been reported that an apartment management firm, Bell Partners, is able to save up to $100,000 every year after choosing e-invoices over traditional paper invoices. 

3. Saves Time & Increases Productivity

In today’s age, time is everything and while dealing with paper documents, your employees and team members spend a lot of time printing, scanning, faxing, and posting documents. Not to mention the documents that they have to look for here and there and chasing documents that have not yet arrived in the post. All of this can lead to huge amounts of hours wasted every year because of document management.  However, if you were to go paperless then all of this time would be saved as everything would be done digitally. It will allow you to save time and in this age of timelessness, time is money. Plus, it would also enable you to improve the productivity in your office because your team members would be able to focus on more meaningful tasks instead of getting involved in printing documents, scanning documents, posting documents, etc.

4. You Won't Lose Out To Your Competitors

Since most of the companies and businesses around the world have made this transition, if you are making this change then you won’t be losing out to your competitors. Your customers would be expecting a paperless and digital approach from you, whether it is for a sales agreement, invoicing, service contract, or any other thing that the customers require. When you will be providing everything digitally to the customers then you won’t have the risk of losing your customers to your competitors since you are providing your customers with everything that they asked for.

5. Customer Data Is Safe Digitally

By going digital, you are also storing the crucial customer data digitally in the cloud that is actually safer than on a paper document. You can save the document in a safe and secure cloud database where it cannot be accessed by anyone and in this way, the all-important customer data remains secure which affirms the customers that they can count on you.

Accounting departments in UK businesses have continued to shift towards digital practices, but more than four in 10 (41%) continue to rely on paper-based processes, according to new independent research.

The 'Changing trends in the purchasing processes of UK businesses' report, commissioned Invu, revealed a slight reduction in the number of businesses relying on paper-based accounting in the last few years.

The 41% in this latest report is a slight fall from the 45% of business finance decision makers who admitted to relying on paper-based accounting in 2016.

But despite the trend towards digital, the report revealed a significant number of finance bosses who admitted that their company was struggling to move fully to a digital based model.

More than half, 56%, said that a paper process was still used at some point within the purchasing process in their business.

Within accounts payable departments in these UK businesses, 16% of finance bosses said their company had not introduced any digital processes at all - relying on totally paper - while nearly a quarter 24% relied on manual scanning and storing of documents.

Ian Smith, General Manager and Finance Director at Invu, said the findings showed a welcome trend of redundancy of paper-based accounting, but said some businesses were still putting themselves at risk by continuing to rely solely on paper.

"Businesses are often dealing with dozens, if not hundreds of invoices and payment enquiries on a daily basis and trying to manage and juggle these requests and demands using paper and filing cabinets can easily lead to finance departments being overwhelmed.

"Delays commonly arising from manual processing of supplier invoices can result in a business being unaware of its future payment commitments - and then it is only a short step further before they end up in severe financial difficulties.

"Given the current focus in the UK on productivity it is frankly staggering that so many companies won't let go of their legacy paper-based systems and free their accounting teams up to add value to the business rather than drown in paper work.

"In a rapidly changing world this report shows a welcome shift towards the use of technology. I’m concerned for the future of the 41% of businesses that appear to be lagging behind”

(Source: Invu)