Even in slow-changing industries like the legal sector, where regulations and the momentum of the status quo can obstruct the implementation of newer, more efficient technology, the need for paper documentation is becoming increasingly rare.

Digital records are actually inherently safer and more secure than their printed counterparts.

These days, metrics are everything. All things can be quantified, optimized and improved. How are you analyzing the success of your digital work environment? What metrics are you collecting?

Here are some of the best practices and metrics to make sure your workplace and workforce are efficient and successful.

The amount of information a company needs to store, track, and utilize on a daily basis expands every year. If you’re still using printed documents to conduct business; then alongside this the growing pile of paper are the rules and regulations that in just about every sector, dictate how things can and cannot be stored, shared, disclosed, etc.

Once you’ve realized the obvious savings in time, space, and cost of digitizing your paper documents, it’s time to start scanning. Files can be saved in a number of ways and saved in a number of formats (e.g., PDF, TIFF, JPEG). Planning this all out beforehand will ensure a seamless document scanning project.

Your business has realized all the benefits of going paperless: It’s earth-friendly, your documents are searchable with a few keystrokes, and your office is uncluttered. That’s about all there is to it, right?

Wrong.

If that’s all you think going paperless is capable of doing for you, you’re probably not taking advantage of your files’ metadata.

On-premises servers may become more cost-effective after the five-year mark and keep running when the internet isn’t, but that’s about where the advantages of on-premises solutions, which are quickly becoming antiquated, end.

Because budgets are usually made annually, the lower upfront costs of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions are usually a safer bet when planning yearly budgets — they can be adjusted as businesses and market demands change, for one.

Missing paperwork may seem like a tiny issue when you’re dealing with company-wide strategies, but it can have serious and expensive implications for your business. When you can’t find important documents, critical processes like invoicing and customer service get delayed.

Online forms are vital when it comes to running a business. It makes tasks like customer signups, job applications, and product surveys a breeze, all while giving you valuable data to jump-start back office processes. But there’s a lot that goes into building smart web forms.

Running a business smoothly and efficiently starts with the back office. Departments like accounting and administration support are the more visible aspects of your business; therefore, it’s imperative to optimize bookkeeping, record management, and other behind-the-scenes operations.

An important part of running a profitable and productive business is implementing tools that allow employees to work smarter. That’s why many organizations are always looking for the next game-changing enterprise software. Document management systems (DMS) are arguably are one of the most important tool modern businesses should implement.