Efficient business processes save a lot of green – that’s money & trees. By leveraging modern technologies, your business can become more sustainable, efficient, competitive & profitable.
When you think about printer fleet operations, eco-friendly practices like using recycled paper, double-sided printing & centralizing office equipment to increase the number of users per device probably come to mind. All smart measures – especially when you consider:
- Average number of paper sheets used by an office worker annually: 10,0001
- Number of times the average document is copied: 10 times2
- Number of sheets of paper the average office use every year: 12.1 trillion3
So while EnergyStar compliant hardware & smart printer usage go a long way towards sustainability & eco-friendliness, there’s so much more you can do with your business processes to positively impact your bottom line.
More information, less paper
A strong Output Management strategy provides you with visibility, reporting & control while reducing the volume of printed pages & associated costs. This has a significant positive impact on sustainability and frees your IT team from low-value help desk tasks & device management so they can contribute to your high-value strategic initiatives. Output Management provides a layer of automated intelligence over your print devices that eliminates excess & improves information security & employee productivity while giving you control over your print fleet & your print spend.
Decreased costs & increased security for the win
Some businesses love their hardcopy documents & are hesitant to implement Content Services like Electronic Content Management (ECM). But having a culture that’s addicted to paper breeds higher costs & waste while increasing the risk of information leaks, security breaches & non-compliance with regulatory legislation such as PIPEDA. Digitized information is secure & readily accessible by any authorized user with the added benefit that an audit trail is created for each piece of information as it flows through your business, so you can access who, what, where, when & how information was accessed.
The right technology can make it easier
Having the right technology or services can make letting go of all that paper much less painful – enjoyable even! Managed Document Services (MDS) can remove inefficiencies, eliminate wasted paper & bring improvement to those areas that matter most. MDS relieves you from the burden of managing print & instead, gives you the right information where, when & how you need it. In addition MDS also provides you with a single point of control to oversee & manage output.
Beyond your printer, MDS also provides the optimal information infrastructure for other document-related processes such as scanning & routing. Electronic documents are faster, more accurate, can be delivered automatically & won’t be lost or damaged. Combined, you can cut costs significantly & recoup material savings.
Are you seeing green yet?
MDS also provides you with a baseline environmental impact analysis that can include electricity/paper consumption & its associated CO2 footprint which provides you with:
- A greater understanding of the environmental impact of your current state
- The fiscal impact of your operating procedures and document management processes
- The savings you could realise
- A roadmap to support your environmental initiatives
Go with the flow – the workflow
Most organisations have a dire need to automate their archaic paper-based manual document workflows that are riddled with errors & delays, and have, somehow, insidiously become part of their culture.
If your workplace is overrun with paper being shuffled from person to person, it’s time for change! You have an opportunity to automate workflows, eliminate paper & simplify many of the processes you have to repeatedly perform every single day.
In concrete terms, business process automation (BPA) is taking a common repeatable process & automating it to make it more efficient. With the right BPA workflows in place, you can:
- Streamline processes to remove extraneous & duplicate steps
- Always access the most recent version of a file anytime making team collaboration seamless
- Track & log changes to any document that everyone stays current
- Simplify the approval process for everything from expenses to loan applications
- Automatically provide task reminders to users with email notification alerts
- Discard many manual, menial tasks
- And so much more!
Automated electronic workflows ensure that your work is completed at the right time, by the right person while providing you full insight & traceability into your business processes.
Now you’re lean & green!
The technology choices you make for your documents, your workflows & your printer fleet directly impact your business in terms of sustainability, processes & profit. At Ricoh, we are dedicated to helping you every step of the way.
Join us at www.RicohChangeMakers.ca and learn how other Canadian businesses are making business changes for the better. |
