1 Converting your documents before updating your business processes

When turning paperless, a common mistake is to begin converting your paper documents without first stopping the flow of new paper documents. By doing so, you generate more work for yourself and extend the number of days it takes to convert your documents to digital. Instead, before you begin converting your existing paper documents, design and implement a plan for going paperless with future papers.

2 Resisting change

To become a paperless organization, you must change your habits and office culture completely. It’s improbable that you’ll be able to break a behaviour that has been developed and reinforced for years overnight. To successfully modify your business processes, your team must understand how to alter their working habits. To get your team on board, establish a training plan that outlines how they can complete their jobs without using paper.

3 Cut paper use too quickly

You don’t have to go completely paperless overnight and attempting to make too many changes at once. It may cause your employees to become burned out on the idea of going paperless and give up. Instead, try to implement it gradually to get positive feedback.

4 Not have a plan to stay paperless

You can’t just turn off your printers and hope for the best; going paperless necessitates a strategy that entails altering your business procedures to eliminate paper. Examine your workflow, discover where paper is used, and create a digital strategy.

5 Continue keeping paper files after the implementation

It’s tempting to shun the cloud entirely and keep your papers on your local network or even just on your PC, but you’ll be missing out on a lot of the paperless benefits. It’s easier for your staff to access your data on the cloud, and it’s also easier to recover in the event of a disaster. Instead of saving all of your papers like docs or pdfs locally, you can use the cloud to use apps that are more suited to the purpose of your documents.