How SMEs And Startups Can Benefit By Going Paperless?

It is almost the end of 2021 and it is not unusual at all for start-ups and SMEs to go paperless and maintain a paperless work environment. Paperless work environments and offices are more environments friendly than ordinary offices and with numerous different solutions and software available on the market along with the wide availability of cloud technology, it is easier to go paper than ever.

Since most SMEs and startups are only thinking about thing transition but have completely made the change, we thought to bring up some benefits and advantages for SMEs by going paperless:

Time Efficient

One of the biggest charms of having a paperless office is that everything will be in digital format and it can save a lot of time. Handling, signing, managing, and finding stacks of documents is a very time-consuming thing to do but when you have documents available in digital form then it is not gonna be a problem.

If you are looking to find a particular document then simply search for the title of that document and it will show right up on your screen whereas that is not the case for paper documents that can take even hours to find the right documents. Plus, with digital documents, you also get the Search and Find function using which you can find a precise piece of information that you were looking for just by typing in the keywords. 

No Storage Issue

In traditional offices, printing, filing, and storing the paperwork is a huge thing to do since as time passes by, the files and documents increase in number, and to store all of those documents, a separate room is usually required. As the company grows, more and more documents are added to the dump every year and the situation starts to get worse.

With digital documents, storage is not an issue because you can store millions of documents and it would hardly take some GBs of storage. With documents formats like PDF that are commonly used over the world, storage space is never gonna be an issue since PDFs like many other digital documents can be compressed and reduced in size using the Compress PDF tool and multiple PDFs can be also merged together using the Merge PDF tool. 

So, with digital documents, storage is not an issue, you can easily store the documents on the cloud and it would hardly take any storage space and it will eliminate the need to file the documents in cabinets and folders. 

Easy Access To Documents

For start-ups and SMEs, paperless offices can be sensible and easy to work, especially when you take into consideration that one document needs to be accessed by several people in the office. For instance, let’s take a spreadsheet. If this spreadsheet is in paper form then it will be very hard for different employees to use that spreadsheet simultaneously.

Whereas, if the same spreadsheet is in digital form, stored in the cloud then it can be accessed by you and other people in the company at the same time without any problem. If a startup or SME wants to work on a collaborative project then digital documents are the best way to do so.

Easy Audit Trails

A paperless office and digital documents can also help SMEs and startups to comply with the laws and regulations in a better way. For instance, if all the documents are available in digital format including accounting records, receipts, employee information, projects that the company has worked on, etc will make it easier for the company to provide all these records at the will when required. 

Improved Customer Service

Another advantage of having paperless offices is that you can also provide better services to your customers. Since all of the important documents are available in digital form, it will be easier for a company to simply email all the receipts and other required documents. 

These are some of the advantages of having a paperless office for SMEs and startups. However, a few things should be taken into consideration such as some customers and suppliers would want receipts and payment in the form of papers and cheques so, make sure that you have a printer and some paper resources available in the office for such customers. Otherwise, going paperless and making the change is a good idea.