If you or your business are still printing paper or are dependant on physical copies of documents, you are most likely in search of some paperless solutions for 2021.
With remote work not likely to decline this year or anytime soon, there has never been a better time to go paperless. The struggle is real, to say the least. Working from home surrounded by printed sheets of paper or a stack of documents might only add to your stresses, not relieve them.
Sure, you may feel you have all the resources and proper documentation you need to increase sales or at the very least keep your business booming, but here are a few reasons why your business should already be going paperless in 2021 and beyond:
Businesses will save big on paper-related costs
How expensive can paper be anyways? Well, according to UniPrint, the cost associated with printing depends on a few factors.
First, the volume of your documents and how often your employees need to print, secondly the amount of paper that is considered waste, and thirdly the amount of time consumed by printing issues such as upkeep costs associated with your printer or the common paper jam that can easily become a time-waster for you and your employees.
For example, if we use UniPrint’s helpful printing cost calculator, we can roughly assume that a company with one thousand employees will likely end up costing a business an estimated $175,000 a year—and that’s just in printed paper costs!
If you then factor in the need to purchase printers and ink, your business could end up spending thousands if not up to millions of dollars on these increasingly outdated office supplies. You might also be unintentionally irking your shareholders, too.
Furthermore, if you needed any more reasons to cut back on these costs, some paper providers are already announcing (or warning) a significant increase to their prices for 2021.
So how costly is paper? Very, to say the least.
Printing less means saving time, money, & the environment
Think about how much time you’ve spent dealing with a pesky paper jam. You stand there, waiting for your document to print only to be confused by the error messages blinking on your printer. You try again, and again, and again. Eventually, your document is printed–along with several other copies from all those times you hit “Print”.
I for one not only find the paper jam annoying, but it can be extremely stressful as well. Say that I have to print out a copy of my latest report for my boss, or perhaps I need a client to review a contract. Having an untimely paper jam not only prevents me from achieving these requirements but can also lead to a loss in potential business–or worse.
Perhaps you’re like me and you simply try printing again to see if the issue has been resolved, only to find that your printer is spitting out two copies of the one document you needed to print. Instead, you have got about forty pieces of scrap paper that either gets used or simply heads to the recycle bin, leading to more waste.
Now think about the cost for a moment. The cost not only being the money spent on each sheet of paper but the amount of your employee’s time that this paper jam ate up, too. By going paperless, you are not only saving time and money but also reducing waste and saving the environment.
Employees don’t have time to fix paper jams or other printer-related issues, but without a technician on staff, that’s exactly what they end up doing. Paper jams are also inevitable, to say the least. Perhaps you have your IT department resolve the issue, but this also takes away from their ability and time to ensure your business is protected from other, more pressing issues.
Furthermore, paper plants are either closing for good, or they’re scaling back in order to scale up production. The impact these closures or increased costs have upon businesses will only cause more time and paper to be wasted.
Paperless solutions are not just beneficial for the environment, but they will also help your office save precious time in the long run. This leads to cutting waste associated with paper jams and your employees wasting their trying to figure out how to fix the printer rather than focusing their energy on bettering your business.
Digitize and archive documents instead of using file cabinets
If your business is serious about going paperless, you will not only enjoy the savings of having to no longer spend resources on printers and paper, but you can also start to remove the need for other office supplies too.
Digitizing documents is a smart way to cut down on paper and is also beneficial in removing the need for bulky office supplies like filing cabinets. Instead of storing sheets of paper in an archaic fashion, you can simply digitize your documents using Optical Character Recognition which will help you declutter your office in more ways than one.
The issue with paper documents is that they don’t hold up in the long term. Old pieces of paper become yellow and can be easily ripped. The ink could smudge off, the corners could be folded, and did you say laminate? Well, that only increases your costs even more!
By using a PDF software like Soda PDF, you can easily digitize your documents by simply scanning the documents and creating new, digital copies of those files as PDFs. You can then use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to easily scan, recognize and edit the text contained within this scanned document.
Furthermore, the PDF format can be archived as a PDF/A. Think of it as a digital filing cabinet, only your file will be in the exact shape and form years later without the worry of physical damage or unreadable materials.
By using Soda PDF, you can easily digitize your documents and avoid the need to use (or purchase) filing cabinets or physical copies of documents through smart paperless solutions that increase your document security and ensure that your important data will be maintained and accessible for years to come.
Use e-signatures to keep a safe distance between people & paper
Another reason to digitize your documents is to keep a safe distance between people and paper. Not only is this a great way to sanitize your office environment, but you can easily keep your business operating at a high capacity by collecting electronic signatures instead of handwritten ones.
E-signatures are gaining popularity and provide businesses a smarter way to collect legally-binding signatures. By using Soda PDF’s E-Sign tool, you can avoid the need to go to the printer by simply adding your signers directly to any digitized document.
For example, instead of spending time trying to fix a printer jam and printing out several pages of a document only to wait for my signer to apply their handwritten signature and send the document back, I can simply load Soda PDF and click on their E-Sign tab.
From there, I am able to add my signer’s details such as their first and last name along with their email address. My signers will then receive an email indicating their legally-binding signature is required on a document.
Best of all, your signers won’t need to download or install Soda PDF in order to add their e-signatures to your document. They simply open the email and follow the instructions by clicking on the field of the document in which their name appears.
Your signers can then add their e-signature with one simple click. You will then get a notification informing you that the signing ceremony has taken place. You can then download the signed document and share the agreement via email with all relevant parties attached.
Not only does e-signing documents save paper, but this saves you and your business precious time. In fact, e-signatures can most definitely speed up any signing ceremony, as you no longer all need to be under the same roof in order to apply your signatures.
Use Soda PDF to simplify the way you manage documents
Soda PDF doesn’t only offer an e-signature solution but is packed with all of the paperless tools you need to cut down on costs and save time.
Whether you need to edit, create, convert, merge, split, secure or archive your documents, you can easily accomplish all of these tasks with one simple software: Soda PDF!
Our software solution was built with you and your documents in mind. We want to help your business excel, especially during times like these in which offices are moving towards remote work settings. Our productivity tools will help you simplify your workflows, increase your productivity, and help you cut ties with paper for good.
Try Soda PDF’s easy-to-use tools and see for yourself why we’re a Top 10 Document Management Software of 2021. Enjoy a FREE 7-day trial when you create an account, which gives you access to our entire suite of PDF tools and services.
Best of all, Soda PDF is available via Desktop or Online, allowing you and your teams to easily modify documents or send files for e-signatures from just about anywhere in the world.
Ready to get started? Contact us today and get a volume discount on 5 licenses or more!