If employees take a noncommittal approach to digitization, they might as well wait for a time that facilitates going paperless.
Finally, company leaders are making the decision to go paperless and embrace with more frequency, a decision that pulls their businesses fully into the 21st century. For hundreds of years, people have been writing, editing and copying documents manually - why spend the needless time and effort doing this if there's technology available that would make these processes so much easier?
Businesses that make the decision to go paperless can see cost savings, save time better spent taking care of other responsibilities, free up office space where file cabinets used to loom and enjoy a bundle of other advantages. However, in order to reap the benefits, employees to have to put in some work beforehand.
Luckily, this isn't really a strenuous undertaking. They simply have to organize existing documents, create digitization schedules so records aren't forgotten or doubled, scan the material and organize the files using .
That being said, if employees take a noncommittal approach to digitization, they might as well wait for a time that facilitates going . Think of it this way - say a company is moving all records online and workers scan about half of all files into the computer, then get bogged down or take on other responsibilities and digitization falls by the wayside. This is almost as bad as eschewing the digital landscape altogether. What if an administrator needs to review an invoice immediately? Is it among the files that are online or is it still in paper form? In the time it takes this leader to search for the document in question, a business partnership could be damaged.
Clutter can result otherwise
If companies aren't dedicated to the process of going paperless once they've already decided to digitize, the clutter than can arise might be overwhelming. For instance, they've likely organized the papers in a way to make the transition online easier, switching up their normal order of filing papers, so things might be temporarily hectic.
The Street reported that to , those who are interested in going paperless are going to have to dedicate a little bit of time to the process. That being said, the news source explained that once the clutter is taken care of, the records will be much easier to find - they can be called up via keyword searches.
If you don't complete digitization, the wrong things can be thrown away
What if employees get halfway done digitizing, take on another project, then hop right back into converting records to electronic files? The easiest thing to do is to start where they left off, but this can often have dire consequences if even small flubs are made.
It would be relatively simple to forget to digitize a few errant papers and send them through the shredder with all of the completed documents, which can be very harmful if the information contained therein is important and not copied anywhere else.
This is why being dedicated is key. PCWorld claimed that in the very beginning, standardizing the digitization process can be a "Herculean task," simply because it can take a long time to sort through files and make big decisions, but . The rediscovery of forgotten records can be very helpful to companies.
Can be a waste after making the investment
After deciding to digitize and purchasing the tools needed to scan documents, it would be almost foolish to abandon the efforts. For one, there's no guarantee that the business as a whole will again have the time to dedicate to the effort, and if this is the case, workers won't be able to . Plus, the company will have wasted the time and money spent researching and ultimately buying scanners and programs, so administrators might as well make sure they go all the way.
