Journeying to a brighter paperless future

Formstack is a Business Reporter client.

Organizations around the world are still wrestling with paper.

Paper, of course, has its uses. It’s seemingly convenient and cheap. But paper documents are hard to handle. Paper gets lost and damaged, it’s difficult to search and it’s extremely expensive to store.

It’s also difficult to take the data held in a paper document and copy it into another document without having to rekey it—a process that typically leads to error rates of between 1% and 4%, which can be a major headache with legal, medical or financial documents.

Benefits of digitized documents

The solution is to digitize documents. Implementing processes in which documents are created digitally, rather than on paper, has many advantages, and its efficiency can save organizations a great deal of time. With digital documents, workflows can be simplified and, in some cases, automated. And once created, digital documents are simple to store and easy to locate, copy, search and access.

In addition, digital document creation delivers a better user experience. It’s common for people in settings such as health care and insurance to have to input the same data into several different forms. Errors can creep in, especially when people are frustrated by having to do this redundant work. Most of all, it’s demotivating, as people feel their time is being wasted. But if documents are digital, then data can simply be copied between documents.

Empowering employees

Digitizing documents enables another major benefit: process automation. The automation of document workflows, where documents are created and shared automatically, frees people to reclaim the workday and do the difficult work that humans are so good at.

For example, in a health care setting, it’s much better to have doctors deciding on appropriate treatment than to make them spend their time searching for a particular paper document in a set of patient notes before they can make their diagnosis—and that’s if the notes are even accessible and not stored somewhere off-site.

Document digitization need not be complex for employees to handle. Generally, it will come as part of a “no-code” capability, where employees don’t need any technical skills (beyond the basic ability to use a computer) to create documents.

Enhanced security

Another important benefit of document digitization is the security and compliance aspect. Paper documents can easily be lost or stolen. And, while there are plenty of reports of cybersecurity breaches, with proper and fairly simple precautions, digital documents can be made very secure, with access to them strictly controlled and with the assurance that they haven’t been copied or altered without authorization.

In addition, signatures on digital documents have an advantage over signed paper documents in that there is a robust record of who signed them, when and even where, that can be referred to for audit purposes.

Meet Formstack

Formstack is a leader in document digitization. Founded in 2006, it provides services that enable companies to accelerate work by automating manual processes such as filling out forms and creating and signing documents.

By digitizing forms, documents and signature workflows, Formstack has saved organizations worldwide more than 470 million sheets of paper, 2 million ink cartridges and 1 million gallons of water.

The company’s all-in-one platform means that documents can be generated automatically; data can be collected efficiently by forms that have been built in just a few clicks; and documents can be signed on any device, with workflows that meet industry standards.

Through Formstack’s innovative “no code” processes that use simple drag-and-drop, conditional logic and pre-designed templates, employees without any technical skills can build their own documents, including smart digital forms that react to user input.

Stop “big paper”

Digitizing documents makes complete sense in almost all circumstances. The days when filing cabinets took up large amounts of office space—and even had to be supplemented by expensive off-site document storage—are over. Today, having a “big paper” mindset is no longer seen as prudent; instead it is considered wasteful and inflexible.

Document digitization is a strategy that all organizations should adopt, as well as being an essential part of any digital transformation program. It is good for the planet, good for people and good for business.

Visit the Stop Big Paper website to learn more about how Formstack can help you digitize your business.

This article originally appeared on Business Reporter. Image credit: iStock id1193926746