Feeling overwhelmed by the deluge of paper-based processes? You’re not in this struggle alone.
Workforce members globally find themselves grappling with antiquated methodologies that squander both time and finances. Research indicates that the most opportune candidates for automation are precisely the processes entrenched in paper-based practices.
Enlisted below are the foremost five paper-dependent procedures that employees are eager to bid farewell to:
- Time Sheets – A company boasting a staff of 50 encounters an annual loss of approximately $40,000 due to time-related pilferage. Introducing automation to time sheet management can nullify this concern and accrue financial gains.
- Embracing invoicing automation can yield substantial financial benefits.
- Purchase Orders – Manual handling of a solitary purchase order can rack up costs of up to $100, while implementing automation slashes this expense to less than $10 per order.
- Contracts – Companies allocate an average of $6,900 in labor expenses for each contract generated. Implementing automated contract management can notably curtail this expenditure and enhance adherence to contract terms.
- HR Forms – Human resources departments dedicate as much as 14% of their work hours to administrative duties, including form completion. Enabling automation for HR forms like travel requests, salary adjustments, and expense claims can liberate valuable time for strategic endeavors, thus elevating overall HR efficiency.
The Downside of Paper-Based Procedures
Picture paper-based processes as unwelcome weeds infiltrating the lush garden of productivity, strangling growth and forward momentum. Uprooting these methods opens up tangible and cognitive space, allowing employees to direct their energies toward weightier undertakings, such as fostering innovation and cultivating fresh concepts.
Below are several compelling reasons highlighting the drawbacks of paper-based processes:
- Environmental Impact – Paper-based practices wield substantial influence over deforestation and waste generation. Opting for digital solutions holds the potential to diminish your carbon footprint and safeguard precious trees.
- Risk of Data Loss – Manual calculations, loss of historical records, and documents languishing in storage are all too familiar pitfalls within paper-based processes. Such issues can hamper the monitoring and analysis of data, potentially leading to information loss.
- Impedes Efficiency – The handling of paper-based documents is a laborious and ineffective affair. Employees invest substantial time in form completion, submission, and awaiting reviews. This can severely impede productivity, causing business operations to grind to a sluggish pace.
- Finding Documents: Traditional filing systems require physical access, and time is often wasted on a trip to a file cabinet or file room looking for a misfiled document. This can be a significant time sink and can prevent employees from focusing on more important tasks.
- Passing Documents Back and Forth: Many business processes hinge on the movement of paper. People often wait to receive approval forms without any visibility into where the forms are in the process. This can create bottlenecks and slow down the overall workflow.
- Workflow Disruption: Paper-based processes can kill the workflow, especially in larger organizations with hundreds of personnel. Tracking every change registered on paper becomes impossible, and it can slow down the overall workflow.
- Tracking: It’s hard to find detailed information quickly in a paper-based system. When one person adds changes, another must go to the archive and look for the required paper. This can be time-consuming and can delay other tasks.
- Education of a Newcomer: Onboarding a new employee can be challenging with paper-based processes. It can be difficult for the new employee to learn everything when the education materials are printed out and not easily accessible.
- Multitasking: Paper-based processes can lead to unnecessary multitasking, making it challenging to collect thoughts and filter out irrelevant information. This can affect work quality and efficiency.
- Tiredness: A workplace cluttered with folders and piles of paper can negatively impact job effectiveness. The amount of documents in the workplace can be overwhelming and lead to employee fatigue.
- Cognitive Functions: Multitasking with paper-based processes can damage the brain. Employees may constantly switch from one task to another, wasting cognitive resources.
- Archive: Running a paper-based process requires creating a proper archive to keep documents safe. This requires additional personnel and funds.
- Invoices: Paper-based processes for invoices can be time-consuming and require different people’s approval. Automation can save time and remove wasted intermediate time.
- Content Approval Process: The process of paper-based content approvals can be one of the biggest productivity killers in a company. A manual process can create bottlenecks and extreme lagging, killing flow and preventing work from getting done.
- Employee Onboarding: The employee onboarding process can often be disorganized and tedious with paper-based processes. It can take days or even weeks to get all the necessary items to a new employee.
- Purchase Requisitions: Paper-based purchase requisitions can result in time delays and over- or under-purchasing of materials.
- Sharing Documents: Making dozens of copies and printouts has become almost an ancient practice. Services like Google Docs, Dropbox, and SharePoint have made file sharing as simple as a drag and drop.
Effortless Expansion with Lark: Leaving Paper-Based Processes Behind
Discover the liberating power of Lark, ushering in a realm where paper-based processes become relics of the past, replaced by an efficacious business approach. Below, explore how Lark Suite orchestrates the reduction of paper-dependent operations:
1. Seamless Real-Time Collaboration
Lark Suite unfurls a collaborative haven, where teams synergize on documents and ventures in real-time, obliterating the necessity for hard-copy dissemination. This dynamic platform also affords comprehensive visibility into every alteration made—an advantage elusive within paper documents.
Imagine co-authoring a contract in tandem via Lark instead of engaging in the laborious process of print, review, and dispatch. Lark’s real-time collaboration expedites proceedings while fostering efficiency.
2. Comprehensive Data Dashboard
Lark Base extends a panoramic vista of data, empowering enterprises to effortlessly monitor and dissect information. Bid farewell to the manual chore of transcribing data from paper to Excel and beyond, as Lark’s dashboard charts simplify the endeavor for managerial insight.
Visualize electronically endorsed purchase orders, replacing their printed counterparts and imbuing the process with celerity and cost reduction.
3. Streamlined Automation
Lark‘s automated workflows metamorphose business processes, punctuating the need for reliance on paper-driven paradigms. Visualize a world where HR forms transcend manual submission, finding a digital haven within Lark’s automated workflows. Precious time once spent on menial form filling now accrues for more strategic endeavors.
By housing paper-based processes and documents within Lark, businesses unlock a repository poised for effortless search, traceability, and fortification. Empowered by granular permission settings—safeguarding sensitive documents—confidential contracts can be securely labeled and restricted to select personnel.
This fusion of user-friendly access and robust security exemplifies how Lark galvanizes businesses, streamlining operations, and salvaging invaluable time.
Wrapping Up
The prevalence of paper-based processes, while commonplace, exacts a toll on productivity, commandeering precious space, time, and resources that could be better allocated elsewhere. Lark stands resolute in its belief that businesses should bid adieu to antiquated methodologies and wholeheartedly embrace the digital era.
Within our platform lies a realm of possibilities: real-time collaboration, automated workflows, and intuitive dashboards primed for seamless data monitoring and analysis—all orchestrated to safeguard time and enhance operational efficiency.
A testament to this transformation lies in the words of a contented customer who joyfully recounted the liberation of their storage room, once cluttered with stacks of paper documents.
So, usher in a new era—forsake conventional practices and welcome a streamlined approach to business through the avenues provided by Lark.
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