Getting rid of your paper doesn’t have to be scary...

Change your ways: less reliance on paper will improve your business and the world.

Today---World Paper Free Day---focuses on the importance of letting go of our paper… not necessarily becoming paperless, but less paper dependent. The concept sounds simple enough.

As the article World Paper Free Day: Four Basic Steps to End Your Reliance on Paper affirms, “We know our dependence on paper is unsustainable. The question is: Are we willing to change?”

Maybe it’s no coincidence that World Paper Free Day falls so close to Halloween. Ghosts, goblins, monsters, and letting go of our paper? To some these can seem like equally frightening concepts.

Reducing our reliance on paper can be difficult---and maybe even a little scary. As the Fast Company-published article Change or Die brings to light, change---even when it’s a life or death matter---can be downright daunting for some people. Although the article was written more than five years ago, the concepts are still applicable, confirming how much we still fear and often resist change.

The article quotes John Kotter, a Harvard Business School professor who asserts, "The central issue is never strategy, structure, culture, or systems. The core of the matter is always about changing the behavior of people."

If you and your company are ready to make changes and take on the challenge set forth by World Paper Free Day, where should you start? The aforementioned article, World Paper Free Day: Four Basic Steps to End Your Reliance on Paper, paves the path with four stepping stones offered by document management technologies:

1. Front-end scanning: end secondary paper waste and make information instantly useful
2. Electronic forms: make information instantly useful while eliminating paper
3. Embed data in bar codes: reduce errors and paper
4. Route work electronically: avoid duplicate copies and redundant work

Interested in more paper-free tips? Check out AIIM’s tips for going “paperless”.

Bottom line:

Making the change to a “paper-less” organization doesn’t have to be scary. By heeding some tried and true advice, the imagined Halloween-inspired horror scene can transform into an orderly one that offers far-reaching benefits to your organization and the environment.

Talk with us:

We’ve helped people overcome challenging situations many times. Contact us today and our experienced team will gladly lend you a hand to help take the ‘scary’ out of letting go of paper.

For more information or to schedule a demonstration, please Contact DocFinity now.