Although many organizations are striving to maintain a paperless office, occasionally having to work with printed documents will never go away. Oftentimes, these documents contain business-critical information that needs to be retained for various reasons, such as accounting, taxation or regulatory compliance.

Going paperless might be one of the biggest buzzwords in the industry, but it’s not always easy to make the transition from paper documents to digital images. After all, most businesses still rely on printed documents to a degree, and that is unlikely to change anytime soon.

The prospect of being audited has long been frightening for financial managers, and not just because any minor error could end up being construed as fraud. To a great extent, the fear that comes with word of an audit has to do with the time, energy and financial resources that go into gathering the documents involved.

People can be extremely difficult to control. A business can establish robust firewalls, install network monitoring systems and feverishly update anti-malware, only to have these efforts come to naught when a weak password makes it easy for an unauthorized user to access data.

At first glance, going paperless presents a major challenge that is easier to surmount when maintaining paper records – bringing together files in a wide range of formats. A paper-based setup means that, regardless of document size, scope or type, it can generally be stored in a fairly accessible format and accessed alongside other files.

Document management software has long been touted as a way to drive efficiency, become more environmentally sustainable and cut costs.

A recent report from The Telegraph said the technology has now evolved to the point that it is ready to deliver on all of these promises.

Going paperless can seem like an intimidating process, especially when it comes to creating internal audit trails and handling document version control. Businesses with established document management processes can find themselves struggling to trust a move to digital.

Document management leaders face a difficult situation. The work they do is highly specialized, to the point that many executives may not understand the full scope of what they do. Something like processing paper invoices feels like a massive inefficiency in the document management world, but an executive sees it as something that takes just a few minutes and not a priority to the business.

The idea of going paperless can be very attractive to a business at a macro level. However, while organizations get excited about cost savings and productivity gains, employees may be left thinking that it is just another big corporate change that won't really amount to much.

Foundation funds offer a variety of benefits such as giving institutions of higher education an opportunity to create special learning experiences that may not be obtainable through regular budget resources. Managing these restricted funds via a paper-based process can be a challenge for the foundation across the campus.