Key takeaways;

Transitioning to the digital space will improve our performance and increase productivity levels..

Steps to remove impeding workflow to concentrate on high value work and to make the process seamless and flowing.

1. Identify a painful process, Why do they want to go paperless?

2. Create your leadership team and drive awareness.

3. Mapping out the process to identify digitization opportunities - which entails typical parts like {capturing information, routing information (workflow),retrieving information (archiving & retrieval )

Focusing should be done on how employees in their respective department handle their documents in three core areas that are typically part of any process:

  1. How do they capture documents that arrive at your organization in a variety of ways — email, fax and even physical mail.
  2. How do they route information entering your organization and how is it shared with others?— especially when they need to approve, review or take some other action.
  3. How do they retrieve information which refers to the process of accessing documents.

4 Choose the right solution

When looking for the right solution certain factors would also be crucial to be looked into

Does the cloud matter?

The cloud requires minimal maintenance compared to on-premises systems, allows for rapid deployment, enables solution acquisition at the departmental level, scales better, improves operational flexibility, and does not require huge upfront license costs.

5 Deploy your chosen content management solution

One can start with a test system or implement it in several steps. implementation in phases:

Phase one can be the proof of concept

Phase two can be iteration to the solution

Phase three would be rolling out the solution

The final solution should include

  • Intelligent indexing to automatically read key data from invoices and match those invoices match invoices with related purchase orders
  • The ability to automatically capture paper documents and quickly import invoices into searchable digital file structures
  • Predefined workflow rules for routing electronic documents
  • Integration between the document management system and QuickBooks for better information flow
  • Can have a “Connect to Outlook” feature that allowed staff to quickly send, receive, and upload documents to a central location, directly from their email accounts

Then the other employees can be trained on how to use the system step-by-step through the new process, for them to understand precisely how it works.

6 Document the process and measure its impact

Documenting the process helps with the successful implementation of a paperless office in other business areas but also with the transfer of knowledge.

What if the employees working on the implementation decide to leave the organization and there are no documents to reference?

How do you measure the impact of going paperless?

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