A survey of small and midsize businesses (SMBs) conducted a couple years ago by Office Depot revealed that 76 percent of responding organizations go green out of concern for the environment. The same research found 49 percent of the SMBs undertook green initiatives to grow another kind of green—money. Environmental stewardship is important (along with the accompanying boost in public perception), but the cost savings of green goals are significant as well.
The drive toward reducing a company’s carbon footprint comes at a time when more files are being shared between employees. These two realities would seem to be at odds with each other, but today’s file retrieval solutions are reconciling this opposition, especially with the increasingly mobile workforce. Companies are discovering they can efficiently share documents while maintaining their green initiatives. And, of course, these organizations save money along the way. Here are four ways mobile file sharing is affecting the paper vs. digital debate:
1. Much less paper
The obvious benefit of digital file sharing is a drastic reduction of paper use. Consider the binders of training manuals companies use to document operations and train workers. Mobile file sharing solutions eliminate all that paper by giving managers and employees easy access to those documents on tablets or other mobile devices. Besides eliminating the need to buy, assemble, and store all that paper, these digital files are better received—and better learned—by today’s generation of technologically savvy employees.
2. Reduced shipping costs
If a company’s corporate office produces a new manual of workplace processes, this content must make its way to potentially hundreds of stores and locations nationwide. That often means that the manuals must be shipped. Besides the obvious expenditure of this strategy, companies stray from their green goals if they are paying for the trucks and planes (running on fossil fuels) to complete the delivery. And if there is just one mistake to a bound volume, organizations must go through the whole process, complete with reams of paper and gallons of fuel, to deliver an updated version. Mobile file sharing technology cuts out delivery costs and facilitates updating—if a document needs a correction, it can be made automatically and reach every appropriate iPad and tablet in the company.
3. Fewer print cartridges
Another drawback of so many paper documents is the expense of simply printing the files. All those print cartridges add up, not only in dollars, but also in terms of the space taken up in landfills—an estimated (and whopping) 375 million cartridges every year. Cut down on paper documents via mobile file sharing solutions, and you save money (not just in cartridges, but also in printer and copy machine maintenance) and make a bold green statement.
4. Dissing disposal
All the paper documents (at least the ones not saved and taking up shelves of office space) that companies produce every year must be disposed in some way. Simply throwing them out in the regular garbage is unacceptable, both from an environmental standpoint and as security concern—sensitive documents can’t be so carelessly discarded. Recycling paper files is preferable, but there is still the cost to haul away (and possibly shred) the documents. Mobile file sharing eliminates the need for so much disposal. The blue bins in your office won’t be going away any time soon (after all, the paper you do use should still be recycled), but you will find them much less full.
How has technology helped your company’s green initiatives?
