Green News

DOES IT HAVE TO BE THIS WAY?

by: Mark Phillips, LP New Media LLC

Anyone who's bought a house remembers taking home a package unlike any package they've ever received before.

It contained highly detailed information about the new home, including measurements of the property and a blinding number of pages that the happy, newly minted homeowners were required to sign before getting the keys.

For most people, buying a home is largest financial deal they'll ever close. So, it just makes sense that they'd get a bulky, burdensome amount of paper just to prove they went through the process, right?

But these packages aren't just for holding up sofas with a missing leg. The closing documents inside the package come in really handy, like during a refinancing, which just about every homeowner goes through.

So if closing documents are so important, why are they being presented to homeowners (i.e. customers) in such a low-tech, antiquated and efficiency-robbing manner? What's more, think of just how much time and money is spent having employees photocopy hundreds of pages for a single home-buying transaction. Now consider a title office that closes 500 or more deals per month. At $8-$10 per set of copies, that adds up to a tremendous amount of money that doesn't need to be spent.

And please have mercy on your customers. Would you want to flip through those countless pages to find the information they're looking for to refinance a home or construct an addition?

If your business deals in large amounts of paper on a daily basis, I want you to stop and ask yourself a few questions. The first and most obvious one is "why". Why do we (or do we really?) need to produce so many paper records? Is it for legal reasons? Are there ways your business can move many or all of its records to an electronic form? If the answer to "why" is "that's the way we've always done it," that's the worst reason.

Consider just how much time your employees spend at the copy machine or printer. Use a stopwatch if you insist.

All of this may sound painfully obvious and elementary, but apparently it's not so obvious to many businesses. A sure-fire way to see if your company produces a lot of paper documents is to check around the copy machine or printers. Are there towering stacks of paper ready to be placed into trays when the machines run out? If so, this is a tell-tale sign that there's plenty of room to change how you do business.

And if you're still not convinced, consider that paperless offices can save lives. Walk into almost any doctor's office these days, and you'll likely see reems of paper documents stuffed into manila folders and organized on a wall behind the receptionst. Those folders contain the sensitive medical information of patients who one or two doctors may care for. Now consider a hospital, where those folders multiply exponentially.

Veteran's Administration Medical Centers, which traditionally were maligned for waste and inefficiency, are now at the forefront of paperless operations by putting all of their patients' medical information into a system that's easily accessible by doctors. No more does a doctor wonder if a certain procedure or test has been done or worry about chasing down a paper document in the fragmented and often disconnected web of medical information.

Doctors get access to critical and life-saving information now – instead of later because staffers are busy hunting down the information – because it's all electronic. A story in the Washington Post recounts how a forward-thinking, paperless mindset helped patients at an Air Force retirement home in Gulfport, Miss. During Hurricane Katrina, the medical records of some 560 people were presumed floating in the Gulf, the Post story says. But the medical records of veterans who had seen VA doctors were stored electronically and those vets got replacement prescriptions overnight.

We may not be talking about saving lives when discussing electronic records created by certified public accountants, tax preparers, law offices, or title agencies. But we are talking about ensuring offices are more efficient and making whatever business in a more pleasant experience for customers. We're also talking about bringing your customers back to your business – through the Web, perhaps – to learn about services they didn't know you offer. The fact is, a countless number of marketing opportunities and chances to upsell customers are being squandered by relying on dizzying mounds of photocopied documents. Shouldn't you turn that pile of paper into a informational tool that empowers customers, presents new opportunities for revenue and, at the same time, saves your staff untold hours of photocopying? Instead of a pile of paper, why not hand a customer a disc? Or login information so they can track their information online?

Remember how much fun it was to stand in line for perhaps an hour just to review your driver's license? Many states now allow driver's license information to be renewed and updated over the Web by the driver. Any number of life insurance policies can be bought online, and an electronic signature is accepted in many states. The bottom line is, if you're not creating processes that make life easier for your customers, you're not doing your job.

A good rule of thumb is, if the process is a pain and a hassle for you and your employees, it's a good bet it's just that for your customers. Going paperless in your business will not only make your business more profitable but create a better experience for your customers. If you've considered going paperless before, please do it quickly, before you and your business are buried under an avalanche of all that paper.

InCase you wondered...

The amount of wood and paper we throw away each year is enough to heat 50 million homes for 20 years.
- Soure Going Green Statistics