The concept of a paperless office has been around since the 1970s. Since then, organizations have been on a mission to replace manual processes with electronic communication and digital data. As a result, a multi-billion dollar technology industry has mushroomed to support businesses in their quest to go paperless.

But have most businesses achieved their goal of a completely paperless office? Not yet. 

Even in today's digital age, paper still plays a significant role in business processes. For example, many legal contracts, mortgages, and critical government documents are still signed and formalized in hard copy or paper format. 

The bottom line: Paper is still an integral part of business processes in almost every industry.

Handling sensitive customer data in paper format is, however, another issue. Organizations expose themselves to many business risks when handling and storing sensitive paper documents. And many times, they have to pay a heavy price for neglecting the secure storage and timely destruction of sensitive documents. The risks and resultant fines for mismanaging documents are significantly high. Worse still, improper storage of records can damage the organization's reputation and erode customer confidence.

In many instances, mismanagement and mishandling of paper documents have had serious consequences.

Paper Blunders: Imagine where paper documents end up

In 2010, patient health records along with social security numbers ended up in a public dump in Massachusetts. The hospitals should have shredded the papers before discarding them as they contained confidential patient data that could have been misused if it landed in the wrong hands.

Another shocking instance of improper destruction of paper records: New York Police department records containing sensitive information detailing deployments for its weapons of mass destruction task force were found in a Manhattan trashcan – and that too outside a precinct station house.

Similarly, there are many instances of companies in the U.S. being sued for maintaining employee information beyond the stipulated retention period.

Fines and penalties have historically been imposed on institutions that violate data security and appropriate disposal of sensitive paper records. But are these enough to prevent potentially dangerous data leaks?

In 2011, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services fined two hospitals a total of USD 5.3 million for improper management of records.

A Florida Bank was fined about USD 975,000 after an employee stole customer data, including personal information, credit card numbers, and bank account details of 8.5 million customers.

Even if organizations take measures and precautions to guard against inappropriate destruction of paper records, there are other risks to storing paper documents:

Disasters and accidents

Natural disasters such as fire, floods, and earthquakes can result in severe damage to paper records or total loss of critical business documents. As a company headquartered in Louisiana, we are all too familiar with hurricanes. Storage-related risks include leaky roofs and walls or even faulty drainage. Wear-and-tear, damage from moisture, such as mold or mildew, and damage by insects are other natural risks to paper. 

Document mismanagement

Paper documents stored in offices are at risk of theft or misuse. Confidential information can easily be lost in storage if not correctly classified or labeled or can even be intentionally stolen by unauthorized personnel if access is not controlled. 

Digital documents & the benefits of going paperless

Clearly, paper is no longer the information storage medium of choice. With advances in technology, digital documents have become the gold standard. Completely paperless operations may not be easy to achieve, but converting legacy records into digital documents to archive and secure information in a digital format is certainly achievable. 

Here are some benefits of digital documents that you simply cannot afford to ignore:

1. Instant access to information: Users expect speedy customer service. A sluggish experience can hurt your company’s reputation and can even lead to loss of business. Digitizing documents makes retrieval fast and efficient, improves customer service delivery and results in better customer experience.

2. Improved security and access control: Paper documents are a significant security risk. When documents are digitized, the paper originals can be destroyed at an appropriate time, depending on compliance requirements. The scanned documents can then be digitally locked and accessed only by those with proper authorization. You can even perform an audit of who has accessed your documents.

3. Ease of access: Digitizing documents allows them to be accessed by multiple users from multiple locations at any time, using any device—the improved ease of access results in increased productivity and collaboration between remote teams. Anywhere, anytime access has become extremely important since the beginning of the pandemic as many workers adjust to a hybrid working environment. Many companies are permitting access outside of their firewalls for the very first time.

4. Increase productivity with paperless workflows: Organizations can adopt automation once paper records are available in digital formats. Digital documents allow you to use business process automation (BPA) tools, artificial intelligence and robotic process automation (RPA) to digitize your workflows and streamline your processes from beginning to end.

RDS: Go paperless, embrace digital documents 

Revolution Data Systems (RDS) helps businesses digitize their paper records and overcome the risks and challenges of storing paper. 

• Our document scanning services handle documents of almost any size, including large format blueprints, newspapers, and engineering drawings.

• We offer onsite scanning services for companies with large volumes of legacy records or if regulations prevent them from shipping documents to our offsite scanning bureaus.

• Our services include backfile scanning of legacy documents and ongoing day-forward scanning to digitize any new incoming paper documents.

• Our digital mailroom service helps digitize paper at its source and move a step forward to achieve paperless operations.

• If you don’t already own a document management system or need to replace a legacy system, we offer OpenText AppEnhancer. AE is a powerful, enterprise-ready content management solution that allows you to securely store, organize, and share all business content.

• We provide workflow automation consulting to manage your digital documents and improve business processes.

• If you have a high volume of documents that need to be scanned on a regular basis, our data capture software can be installed to let your team handle the scanning. Extracted data from digital documents will be usable in existing applications like ERPs and other content management systems.

So take the first step to embrace digital documents and enjoy the benefits of a paperless and automated workplace.