To go paperless or not (Survey results)
Should organisations digitise and eliminate the use of paper? We asked this question to the members of the Governance, Risk and Compliance Management (GRC) group on LinkedIn. Unsurprisingly, 80% of the survey respondents agreed that organisations should digitise and stop using paper copies. But this is easier said than done. In this blog, we look at some of the benefits and challenges of going paperless for organisations.
Paper is here to stay
One of the most speculated trends over the past 30 years in business IT has been reaching a utopian world of a paperless office environment where paper-based workflows are replaced by digital and more environmentally friendly alternatives.
But despite the latest technological advancements in Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) and data management solutions like cloud, AI, ML, and real-time processing, we're still far from achieving paperless office nirvana. In fact, according to the latest statistics in the pulp and paper sector, we are now producing more paper than ever before. Moreover, this tendency is only expected to grow as e-commerce and demand for packaging continue to grow.
From a business perspective, Gartner has estimated that about 3% of a company’s revenue is spent on handling paper, printing, filing and maintaining files of information, and nearly 50% of business waste is paper.
So, if processing paper is so costly for organisations and the technology to go all digital is already here, why are so many businesses still so heavily reliant on paper-based data handling systems and procedures? Unfortunately, there is no straight answer and reasons tend to vary - from simple organisational habits to inevitable business needs like producing collateral to hand out during an event or in-person meeting or printing out a contract to get a “wet signature”.
However, with the major shift to remote working globally over the past couple of years due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we are starting to see more and more businesses making their transition into a fully paperless working environment.
To assess people’s sentiment towards the rising trend, we ran a poll in the Governance, Risk and Compliance Management (GRC) group on LinkedIn, asking members if they believe their organisations should digitise and stop using paper. 80% of all 647 respondents agreed.
The benefits of going paperless
In addition to the obvious ecological benefit of adopting a paper-free operational model, going digital can also help organisations achieve greater efficiency, better security, reduced costs and lower risk of regulatory non-compliance.
Remote and instant data access – by storing all your documentation digitally, you can have instant access to your data anytime, anywhere. Electronic data management also allows for quick, easy and secure data transfer and search. This can further improve the communication within your organisation and the effective collaboration between different teams.
Better security – keeping physical documents in your premises increases your chances of having a security breach – paper-based data can be easily lost, copied, stolen, photographed, scanned, etc.
Technologies like electronic content management systems and blockchain allow you to have full control over your digital documents, with setting up access rights, managing authorised signatories and electronic signatures and keeping clear audit trails of any changes made to the data.
Reduced costs – moving to electronic document management can help you reduce operational costs such as time spent on managing and distributing paper documents as well as physical costs related to data storage office space, energy consumption, printers, postage fees, etc.
Ecological sustainability – paper consumption takes large part of organisations’ growing carbon footprint. So, going digital can help you reduce or even eliminate your dependency on paper documents and thus improve your overall environmental impact.
Lower risk of regulatory non-compliance – an increasing number of both national and international laws and regulations such as GDPR (EU), AIFMD (EU), HMRC accounts keeping (UK), HIPAA (US) and Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) (US), require the maintenance of records in an organised, secure and accessible way. Hence, by managing and storing documents digitally, you can minimise the risk of compliance breach.
The challenges of going paperless
Despite the multiple benefits of adopting a paperless business model, there are a number of issues that stop many organisations from making the transition. These include migration costs, digitally incompetent staff, potential data loss, cyber risks, and certain regulatory requirements.
Migration costs – Migrating data from paper to digital repositories is often a burdensome and costly exercise.
Incompetent staff – Some employees might not be digitally savvy and require additional training and education.
Potential data loss – Digital systems, if not properly maintained and protected, are at risk of experiencing data loss.
Cyber risks – Digital systems are often exposed to cyber-attacks and multiple security threats like phishing, data leakage, identity theft and fraud.
Regulatory requirements – In highly-regulated sectors like financial services, there are certain regulations that require organisations to keep paper records for a specific period of time by law.
Moving to a paper-light model instead
Even though achieving a completely paper-free business world globally is still quite far away, we expect a much quicker than anticipated move to a “paper-light” environment across organisations, especially in key areas like accounting, content approval, signatory authorisation and business banking.
Cygnetise provides a secure, real-time blockchain-based signatory and bank mandate management application, equally accessible from principle or remote locations. The application does not require any system integration.