I see it at my kids’ school, the bank, the oil change shop, my accountant—almost every place that needs information from me. In an attempt to make things easier and “just print it off,” businesses are making it harder on themselves to store and act on the data they collect.
Some offices have made attempts to digitize the intake process by sending a link to the paperwork ahead of time or handing me a tablet in the office or lobby. Yet, there’s still a fair amount of places that live by the clipboard method, pushing paper that takes up physical space, risks security, and wastes everyone’s time with longer visits.
Needless to say, when I provide feedback, it’s often about the intake or registration process. My top tip? Make it easier on yourselves and your customers with automated workflows from Formstack.
Why Are We So Obsessed with Paper?
The past two decades have been marked by the evolution of technology and digitization of our everyday lives. Yet somehow, we as a society now use paper more than ever before. In fact, the global consumption of paper and paperboard was approximately 400 million metric tons in 2023, an increase of almost 70% relative to 1990 levels. Surprisingly, global paper consumption is projected to further increase in the coming decades, surpassing 460 million metric tons by 2030.
But it’s not just about “getting with the times.” While paper may seem convenient, it is especially cumbersome in office environments where consumption is greater and workflows operate on a larger scale.
Online forms and workflow automation increase your team’s productivity and efficiency, improving customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, and the bottom line. If you haven’t yet ditched paper workflows, here are five compelling reasons that may change your mind.
1. Increased Productivity
Automation may seem like a scary and complex overhaul for your business, but consider this: with paper workflows (like patient registration, contract signing, or invoicing), you actually pay your skilled workers to perform menial data entry tasks that a computer could do instead of freeing them to strategize, make decisions, and innovate for the company.
The act of switching between manual tasks has even been shown to cost employees a whopping 40% of their productivity. Managing information on paper (or worse, across multiple email inboxes) bogs down the individuals who must gather and sort through the information, creating a bottleneck that halts productivity and forfeits organization and accuracy.
Why Digital Wins: Workflow automation frees up resources by letting digital processes do the work for you, while ensuring that information is gathered and stored in a single place for easy access and follow-up action. No switching to other apps to collect data. No logging out of Salesforce. No taking 25 minutes to resume a task after an interruption.
2. Greater Employee Satisfaction
Seventy percent of employees say their sense of purpose is defined by their work. But if they’re stuck pushing paper all day instead of meaningfully contributing to the company, it’s doubtful they feel completely satisfied.
What helps? Technology that automates and elevates their work instead of complicating it. In fact, in a Harvard Business Review pulse survey, 91% of respondents said high-quality digital tools are extremely, very, or moderately important to the employee experience. But only 57% agreed that their organization’s digital tools create a positive work environment and make them feel engaged.
Why Digital Wins: When repetitive tasks are automated, to-dos are completed much faster, stress levels are lowered, and employees can finally focus on what they were brought in to do. Automation can help your sales team build new customer agreements so they can get back to selling. Or, it can generate a customized invoice so customer service can get back to interacting with customers one on one. Either way, automation lets the computers do the juggling so the humans can get back to thinking.
3. Digital Transformation
The emergence and popularity of digitally native companies like Uber, Airbnb, or Ally Bank prove that consumers prefer quicker, more streamlined services instead of those that require extra runaround, paperwork, and headache.
Aside from transforming your company to keep up with our increasingly tech-savvy culture, digital transformation also means better protecting your data—and your reputation. Humans are prone to error. So when the majority of internal processes are manual, accuracy automatically takes a hit because of the increased probability of error due to human nature and general burnout.
Why Digital Wins: Remember: for every company that’s resistant to change, there’s always a more agile, tech-forward competitor willing to take its place. With digital workflow automation, data is stored in one secure place and can be routed to multiple documents or systems for easy and more accurate personalization.
4. Higher ROI
On average, companies make $5.44 for every $1 spent on marketing automation, a 544% ROI. That’s because efficiency breeds productivity, which breeds revenue. Paper approval processes and data gathering increase the risk of inaccuracy and the length of common workflows.
But when data flows seamlessly, managers can grant approvals faster, sales can close deals faster, and employees can resume work faster.
Why Digital Wins: With automated workflows, employees are able to focus on higher priorities, which are usually more revenue-focused. And with data and powerful integrations, customers receive more personalized communications and support, which keeps them loyal longer.
5. A Better Planet
There’s no doubt we’ve become a more wasteful planet. In the office alone, 70% of waste is made up of paper, and as much as 30% of print jobs are never even picked up from the printer. When you consider how simple it is to automate document workflows, justifying paper processes becomes even harder.
By implementing digital processes like using online forms to collect data, sending digital invoices, and requesting digital signatures, the need for paper—and the fuel to transport it—is eliminated.
Why Digital Wins: In a digital office, companies don’t just save money by purchasing less paper. (Printers, toner cartridges, paper, writing tools, shredders, photocopiers, staples, paperclips, folders, and cabinets add up to around $400,000 a year for the average company.) They also help counteract some of the energy usage and negative effects that buildings and offices already have on the environment. When you prioritize digital, you lower your carbon footprint and avoid contributing to the deforestation and forest degradation that accounts for about 20% of annual greenhouse gas emissions that fuel climate change.
Related: These paper consumption statistics will blow your mind!
Formstack Saves You Time, Money, and Paper
Formstack Forms and Documents allow you to ditch paper workflows for more efficient, automated processes. Whether you’re transferring data from Dropbox to a PDF, requesting a digital signature, or performing countless other automated workflow use cases, Formstack makes it easy to win back employee time and company money by eliminating manual processes.
Discover how the Formstack Platform can make your workflows more efficient than ever by grabbing our new guide, 8 Business Workflows to Improve Your Company Today.
Start a trial or request a demo today.
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