Creating a paperless office environment could be a reality now with new technological developments emerging before us. It not only does good to our environment, but can save huge paper and printing costs as well.
So, how can you cut down your office expenses by going paperless and reducing your environmental footprints as well? Here are the five technologies to look for:
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Document Sharing Systems
There is no need to print documents to share among employees. Sharing soft copies may expedite your work and will save printing cost too. You can take help of Google Docs or any other service to work all together with your colleagues on a document. It’s a free service from Gmail and can be ideal for small businesses where employees can also chat with each other for a collaborative work environment. Microsoft Office 365 is another system that you can use for document sharing. Its interactive document editing feature makes it more valuable. You may also use Basecamp for file sharing and collaboration. However, employees cannot edit the same document simultaneously using Basecamp.
Online Invoicing and Bill Payment
You can pay several types of bills online every month, such as telephone, internet bills and others. When you pay these bills online, you remove the hassles of handling paper-bound bills, invoices, and receipts. It becomes easier for you to maintain all bill payment records and it will be easier for you to collect the data at the time of tax preparations. Many companies promote online timely bill payments and they may reward you with several types of incentives too. Using an online invoicing tool like Invoicera helps you manage all your invoicing and estimation tasks online.
File Storage Systems
You can rely on Dropbox and similar programs for moving and storing large size files. You can also create different folders within the system for different team members. Another good option for sharing files in a paperless environment is YouSendIt.
Survey & Meeting Scheduling Tools
There are several types of free tools that you may take help for conducting surveys and also for scheduling meetings. Doodle and SurveyMonkey are some of the helpful tools.
Besides, you can use TeamViewer to access your computers remotely and share files and presentations during meetings. You can use any computing device or smart-phone to use TeamViewer. It eliminates the need of sharing handouts during presentations. Using TeamViewer you can share slides and videos with the people you are making the presentation for. Otherwise, you can upload your content or presentation on Basecamp or Dropbox and they can download the digital copies of your presentation at any time. So, there is no use of paper and printers.
Online Faxing Solutions
Many organizations still believe in faxing documents to their partners and associates. But instead of sending documents through fax, one can scan the documents and can send via email or can even use online fax systems. You can easily use an app called TurboScan for scanning documents. It allows you to use your smart-phone camera as a scanner and carry out good quality paper scanning. One can take the help of services of eFax.com for receiving paperless faxes into the e-mail inbox.
These are some of the technological tools that allow you to minimize the use of paper in your office. While it reduces the expenses, it also helps in increasing the efficiency within an organization. By adopting new technologies, you can, not only save a number of trees every year, but can also save your money from going to the waste bins. Whether you are a big corporation or a small business, creating a paperless work culture can definitely prove to be a a futuristic step to help protect our environment and save costs too.
