6 Paperless Office Best Practices

Going paperless is a must for your office for two important reasons: you will save a lot of money and make your office run much more efficiently. In order to get the most out of a paper-free office space, you need to have a set of best practices in place to streamline the process. That being said, here are six paperless office best practices that you need to implement as soon as you have converted from paper to digital documents:

1. Don't confuse the paperless document management process

When your office goes paperless, it should be just that: paperless. As such, you need to make sure that every single document in your office is converted to a digital file and either destroyed or stored away. If you try to juggle paper and digital documents, your office will get confused because your team will be constantly making mistakes when trying to access files. For example, an employee could forget that a particular document is now a digital file and they could waste their time searching for a paper document that no longer exists.

2. Streamline your digital document management with document management software

Although simply having a paperless office will go a long way towards streamlining your office activities, you should not stop there. You can further increase the operating efficiency of your office by adding document management software that can provide you with the following benefits:

• Faster access to all of your files
• Easier document organization
• Automated document management
• The ability to access your documents from anywhere

3. Prepare for present and future storage needs

One of the biggest mistakes that you can make in your newly digital office is to only prepare for the present. Your document storage capabilities should always extend well beyond your present needs to match your expectations for (at least) the near future. This way, your office won't get overwhelmed with a sudden influx of data that causes your needs to exceed your current storage capacity. One of the best ways to make this happen is to invest in cloud storage, which gives you unlimited access to storage on an ad-hoc basis without breaking the bank.

4. Distribute access to your paperless documents according to need

Another key factor for having an effective paperless office is managing document access. You need to make sure that all of your employees can access the documents that they need to use. At the same time, you need to make sure that you aren't accidentally giving people open access to files they aren't authorized to see or edit. 

5. Prepare to convert future documents to digital files

A paper-free office should be completely paperless. In reality, however, you will eventually receive some sort of paper document whether you like it or not. This doesn't mean that you have to use paper documents. In order to not confuse your paperless document management process, use a document scanner to immediately convert these documents to digital files as soon as you receive them.

6. Implement paperless document security

A new type of document management means a new type of intrusion. Instead of trying to break into your office and whisk away boxes of paper information, people will try to hack into your company's computer system and steal your documents from somewhere else. You can prevent this from happening by investing in a solid document security system as soon as your office becomes paperless.

Make sure that your office is prepared for paperless

The six best practices discussed in this article will help you get the most out of your paperless office.