Go Paperless

Go Paperless St. Louis

Go paperless in St. Louis. The idea of going paperless is becoming more and more appealing to St. Louis businesses. Eight out of 10 small to medium size businesses want to cut paper out of their workflow. With a paperless workflow, you'll save on a variety of costs, will make life easier for your clients, and will improve your workflows so your employees can be more efficient and productive. HITS has been helping St. Louis organizations become the best versions of themselves for over 25 years. Call HITS today at 314-837-4000 or contact us online for a free quote and find out more about what we can do for you.

Go Paperless in St. Louis: Stats to Know

The true cost of paper storage might surprise you:

• An estimated 7.5 percent of paper documents are lost; 3 percent are misfiled
• On average, filing a paper document costs $20, finding a missing documents costs $120, and reproducing a lost document costs $220
• Office workers spend 5-15 percent of their time reading documents, but 50 percent of their time looking for it
• 75 percent of the cost associated with paper storage is spent on salaries; the rest on storage and equipment
• Document related challenges account for a 20 percent loss in productivity, or two working months per year

Given the above, it's not difficult to see why more and more St. Louis organizations are choosing to go paperless in order to save money and enhance their workflows.

8 Benefits of Going Paperless in St. Louis

Going paperless has a huge impact on your business, your employees, your partners, and your clients. The top 8 benefits you're likely to see by going paperless in St. Louis are:

1. Save space — By going paperless, your office will be more open and significantly less cluttered, which can improve productivity by up to 20%.
2. Save time — Your employees will be able to focus on the job you pay them for; not on finding the documents they need in order to do it.
3. Save money — A commercial copier costs anywhere from $3,000 to $15,000, not including the cost of yearly maintenance or repairs. By going paperless, you'll also save on paper and ink cartridges and storage space, and you won't be paying employees to look for documents.
4. Increase productivity — Open office spaces not only boost creativity, but digital files will lead to better collaboration and organization, as documents are easier to find and share, even when employees are miles away from each other.
5. Increase security — Most companies have sensitive information, either about their internal processes or their clients. By going paperless, you can control which accounts and servers have access to which documents, instead of anyone with physical access to the storage space being able to see them. Digital documents are also safer in the event of a natural disaster.
6. Increase compliance — Customer trust and compliance with federal regulations, such as HIPPA and SOX requirements, are vital for many St. Louis businesses. With increased security, your sensitive records will be easier to control, and clients' information will be better protected.
7. Move to a mobile workforce — Many employees like working remotely because they feel more productive, have more autonomy, spend less time and money on commuting, and generally enjoy being home more than being at the office. Employers get the benefit of reduced overhead, access to more workers, and improved employee retention. If you go paperless, both you and your employees can enjoy the benefits of remote work.
8. Help the environment — The average American office worker disposes of 100-200 pounds of paper each year. By going paperless, you can save some trees and do away with ink and toners, which end up in landfills and are harmful to the environment.

How to Go Paperless in St. Louis

The advantages of a paperless workforce may be obvious, but it's a daunting task for any St. Louis organization, especially if you have years' or even decades' worth of paper storage you need to retain. But going paperless doesn't have to be difficult, especially when you employ records management veterans like HITS, who, through experience and expertise, have learned how to make the transition as easy as possible:

• Digitize your paper documents — This is the most obvious first step. Go through all of your paper documents, get rid of the ones you don't need, and scan the others into a digital format.
• Pick your digital storage service — There are hundreds of applications and software dedicated to online storage. Do your research and pick which works best for you. Depending on your St. Louis company, you may prefer cloud-based storage, on-premises storage, or a hybrid solution.
• Digitize your workflows — You now need to make sure the new documents created will be digital and not analog. Set up a system to send invoices and receive payments electronically and use e-signatures for contracts and other documents. Turn note taking during meetings digital, which allows everyone who needs to to quickly go back over the meeting.
• Upskill your employees — Some of your employees may already be tech-savvy, while others may be nervous about switching to a digital system after years of analog storage. Train your employees and make sure they're comfortable with your new system, and that everyone understands and has bought into your new processes.
• Move existing digital documents to the same system — If you were partially paperless before, make sure any of the digital documents you already had are being migrated to your new application.
• Scan and shred newly made paper documents — If you still have a paper documents coming in, make sure they're scanned and moved to your new system quickly, and then securely destroy them.
• Share your new process with clients and partners — Once you've gone paperless internally, make sure those outside of your organization are able to easily adapt to the new changes. Present it as an exciting new opportunity to make life easier for everyone.

HITS' Approach to Going Paperless in St. Louis

Without an agency experienced in helping St. Louis businesses go paperless, you might accidentally lose important documents, or the process may take much longer than expected. At HITS, we've been helping St. Louis companies go paperless and improve their workflows for over 25 years. In that time, we've learned how to make the process efficient and pain-free.

With our patent-pending DocuMiner® application, we help you go paperless in three easy steps:

1. Sort your documents into two groups: those you need and those you don't
2. Scan the paper documents you need to keep
3. Shred those that have met your retention policy

Once scanned, we can migrate your data to your preferred file types and document management system. Our Paperless to Go service is specifically designed to help St. Louis companies move to a remote workforce.

We've helped a variety of St. Louis organizations go paperless, from nonprofits to government agencies, and even healthcare providers with our STR8VIEW® application.

Call HITS Today to Go Paperless in St. Louis

We named ourselves after our values: Honor, Innovation, Teamwork, and Security. By going paperless with HITS, you can rest easy knowing that your documents and your clients' data are in good hands. However big or small your project, or however many piles of paper documents you need converted, HITS will do the job efficiently and securely. To find out more, call us today at 314-837-4000 or contact us online for a free quote.