Go Big or Go Green: Reduce your Footprint with Paperless Document Management

Finding ways to be environmentally-friendly is all the rage in offices around the US, but going green is much more than a fad; it’s a way for a company or organization to personally take steps to reduce their environmental footprint.The commitment to going green in the workplace can be daunting. It is tempting to print out each invoice, email, purchase order, etc. because saving it in cyberspace on the cloud is still unfamiliar territory for many businesses.However, the environment is having a hard time keeping up with our paper usage.Here are the facts:

• Every year in the U.S., one billion trees worth of paper is thrown away (Recycling Revolution)
• The U.S. consumes 30% of the world’s paper (reduce.org)
• 95% of business information is still stored on paper (iD2 Communications)
• The average American uses 700 pounds of paper each year (iD2 Communications)
• Americans throw out around four million tons of office paper every year (iD2 Communications)

The numbers are mind-boggling. So mind-boggling, that it may seem like we are already so far behind and that there is no way to reconcile the environmental devastation we’ve gotten ourselves into. But, for businesses who are dedicated to making a difference, there are ways to help curb the footprint that your company leaves on the earth.

According to Ecopreneurist, the average company produces 1.5 pounds of paper waste per employee per day. That is highly inefficient and has a dramatically negative effect on the environment. We’ve heard that having piles of paperwork lying around can lead to mistakes caused by lost or missing documents, misfiling, typos during manual data entry, and many other problems from having individual sheets of paper. A document management system can help with all these problems, it can integrate with Microsoft Dynamics and it can also get your business on the road to a new, green initiative.

Green IT is a growing movement in the United States as more businesses look for ways to positively impact the environment. A great first step that your business can take is an automated document management system that complements and integrates with Microsoft Dynamics. As stated above, our country goes through hordes of paper every year– even every day. A document management system paired with Microsoft Dynamics helps eliminate loose papers from your office and storage facilities and helps reduce the number of trees needed for office paper each year.

Going green and a using a document management system like MetaViewer-- a fully-automated paperless solution that integrates with Microsoft Dynamics-- go hand-in-hand. By integrating a document management system into your company, the green part will happen automatically. By storing files with a paperless solution, your time and money will be saved– and so will some trees.

With a document management system, your company can look back and see the ways that it’s helping Mother Nature rather than hurting her.

 

Nick Sprau is vice president of marketing and sales for Metafile Information Systems Inc., an independent provider of paperless document management applications serving middle-market and large businesses. For more information, visit www.metaviewer.com.

by MetaViewer