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    Kill the Paper Trail: Six Ways to Achieve Digital Transformation

    Buzzwords like “Innovate!” “Disrupt!” and “Transform!” sound great. They’re super powerful but can also feel daunting – and from an IT perspective, these terms can often sound like a huge undertaking, very expensive, and lack a definitive set of actions. But regardless of how abstract they may seem, companies of all sizes are feeling the pressure to transform into “digitally driven” organizations. What does that really mean, and what is the first step toward change?

    Fifty-seven percent of IT leaders say they’re committed to digital transformation, and looking at paper consumption is an essential entry point. By eliminating paper-based processes, you can start digitally transforming your entire organization in a way that’s easy to implement, cost efficient, and beneficial for employee productivity and customer experience alike.

    In this slideshow, Nitro has identified six essential ways IT leaders can go paper-free to make true digital transformation a reality.

    Kill the Paper Trail: Six Ways to Achieve Digital Transformation - slide 1

    Make Digital Transformation a Reality

    Click through for six essential ways IT leaders can go paper-free and make a true digital transformation a reality, as identified by Nitro.

    Kill the Paper Trail: Six Ways to Achieve Digital Transformation - slide 2

    Audit Your Current, Paper-Centric Processes

    How much paper is there in your workplace? Where would it make most sense to cut paper? Start by tackling the small, tangible initiatives that will help you demonstrate quick wins. For example, 45 percent of the paper printed in offices ends up in the trash bin every day, and 30 percent of print jobs are never even picked up by the user. Auditing the processes that produce such waste will give you a clear understanding about your organization’s paper consumption and ultimately help you determine what hardware and software you need (or don’t need) to truly go paperless.

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    Get Buy-In from Leadership and Employees

    Share insights from the process audit with leadership and employees, and identify internal champions you can count on to help digitalize paper-based workflows. Strategize with leadership around budget and goals —- for example, how soon do you want or need to see ROI? Keep in mind that 59 percent of IT leaders achieved a payback in less than 12 months from their paper-free projects, including 26 percent in six months or less.

    Kill the Paper Trail: Six Ways to Achieve Digital Transformation - slide 4

    Adopt a PDF Editor

    PDF is the most ubiquitous document format in the world, with 2.5 trillion being created each year and 73 million new documents saved each day in Google Drive and Mail. Yet, in organizations with 100+ employees, 74 percent of workers don’t have access to a proper PDF editor, and many resort to printing because they can’t properly handle their documents digitally. Equipping all knowledge workers with a powerful PDF tool that enables digital document creation, editing, and collaboration is key to eliminating the use of paper in team document workflows.

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    Incorporate eSignatures

    You can eliminate paper in signature-collection processes by adopting a secure eSigning tool. These tools can play a key role in ground-up digital transformation, as many of them include features that facilitate approval workflows, improve visibility, and offer greater security than paper documents. eSigning can save your business time and money — $20 per signed document, in fact — and reduce document  turnaround times by 80 percent, which translates into a better experience for customers.

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    Standardize on Collaboration Processes

    A study from consulting firm McKinsey identified a clear link between collaboration and productivity, as well as innovation. Sharing, reviewing, and storing documents in an ad hoc manner leads to unproductive workflow patterns across an organization. Instead, standardize on a secure cloud-based sharing, storage, and collaboration platform to increase transparency, speed, and accessibility, and enable colleagues to work together better.

    Kill the Paper Trail: Six Ways to Achieve Digital Transformation - slide 7

    Make Paper-Saving Part of the Culture

    Get your Human Resources and Corporate Sustainability teams involved in this transformative process. Create competition between departments to track who’s consuming the least paper, or who can devise the best strategy for reducing usage. Making it fun, and sharing the impact of any efforts, will help ensure real and measureable success for your organization.

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