*By Mario Gama
Documentation traceability, big data, cloud computing, GDPR compliance and scanning are some of the advantages of paperless adoption in companies. This movement that started about 10 years ago and today has become a business requirement for most companies, as it optimizes actions, provides data protection and is closely linked to the digital evolution process. This is not a cost, but an investment, which, by the way, pays for itself very quickly.
To contextualize the importance of adopting this culture, Dice from the Brazilian Association of Document Managers (ABGD) show that managers spend about four weeks a year looking for information, due to problems with inadequate storage or disorganized files.
The study also points out that every 12 seconds a document is lost in companies. And it shows that the average daily time spent by employees looking for lost documents between departments is two hours.
This shows that those who are not technologically advanced have a very large demand for actions that delay the processing of a series of procedures. The paperless culture, in turn, can be implemented especially by digitizing documents and continuing the process in the digital environment. There is also the adoption of digital signature, which also corroborate the practice and bring great gains to companies.
Why invest in paperless?
Migration to digital is a trend for a number of areas of all types of companies that work with paper, printer and signature, from the smallest to the largest. Among the reasons that make paperless a strategic action is the fact that the cost of keeping physical documentation stored is very high. In addition, there is a great risk of losing this information. Not to mention the difficulty of locating.
Environmental gains are also highlighted. According to information from the WWF Brazil, producing a ton of new paper consumes 50 to 60 eucalyptus trees and 100,000 liters of water. Therefore, the adoption of the digital documentation chain does justice to what many companies attest in their missions and values.
With the paperless culture implemented, it is possible to digitize contractual processes and various documentation. This optimizes the management, scales the information search time, provides security and treats data intelligently, mitigating risks such as the loss of documents.
Thinking of a practical example and close to many: digital banks. It is no longer necessary to sign a printed document, scan it and send it. All this can be done digitally, with legal value.
Bringing to the reality of companies, the information that HR would take a month to collect, by the traditional model, with the adoption of the digital signature tool, is now carried out in a week. This is because it is possible to send, in a single click, information to all employees and receive it automatically. In addition to the cost reduction, there is a significant time saving.
Step by step to become a paperless company
The first and most important step is for the company to understand that it is not an expense, but an investment with a quick return. Certain of this, it is time to decide whether this migration will be done internally or by hiring a partner company, taking into account the need for software, hardware, consultancy and also training and qualification of employees.
It is essential that companies have fast and accurate scanners, not to mention the GED (Electronic Document Management), a set of technological systems that allows capturing, processing, storing, indexing, sharing and backing up a company's documents and information.
The ideal, in this context, is to carry out a survey, understand where the company is in its digitization process and what volume of documentation will be handled per year. It is also important to find out if the company already has a document management system and map out which sectors can benefit from it. So, there is a process of prioritizing digitization and consultation with specialists who have the knowledge to, after digitization, create a continuity of the process in a digital 100% way.
After this information collection, it is enough to certify the cost-effectiveness, taking into account the total investment value compared to the hour spent per worker, physical space used to store large amounts of paper, not to mention the possibility of losing extremely confidential or sensitive documentation.
The implementation time, in turn, is directly linked to the volume of documentation that the company has and the team available for it, which can vary from weeks to years.
LGPD
THE LGPD it is a citizen's right and it provides that companies that handle personal information have control so that these can be edited if required by the user. In this sense, applying LGPD to a paper environment is a very big challenge for companies, as it reflects in high cost and difficult handling.
Digital documentation, on the other hand, allows agility and greater ease of complying with standards. For example, upon receiving a notification or inquiry, the company has 48 hours to contest or respond, which is impracticable depending on the amount of physical documents. This makes companies increasingly adopt paperless to help comply with the LGPD and also to locate data in the appropriate time that the law requires.
In addition, the fact of having the digital document duly signed by the certification bodies with ICP Brasil, guarantees the integrity of the document, as well as confidentiality and availability, three items required in the handling of documents, from the point of view of security of the information and data privacy.
paperless technology
Technologies for paperless implementation allow backup and replication of information, sometimes at a relatively low cost. Along with this, there are modern tools for reading these documents and consolidating information in data lakes, which allow searches faster than those of a physical document.
When the subject is the transformation of the document to digital, there is also a concern with guaranteeing its access in the future. The market today has technologies such as a PDF generator, which ensures that the file opens here in 25 years, for example, all of this supported by an ISO standard.
One of the biggest challenges in this process is to convince conservators, who often prefer to make high annual investments for storage in large warehouses, because the law provides for the need for a physical document. But the question that remains is: what if the place catches fire, what happens to that information? Why not protect yourself with the physical and digital until the competent bodies formalize this digitization?
For cases like this, the tools also allow the download and upload option, in which the digital document is downloaded and printed, for the traditional signature, and then scanned and filed, respecting the user's digital transformation process.
In this way, the tools for digitalization and digital signature, being friendly and simple, allow integration with SAP, Workday or ERP platforms and the connection of these technologies, guarantees that a document is sent for signature through the platform that the company is already used to. .
From a security point of view, the tools also allow respecting all existing standards in the market, for different areas, from the financial market (SOX, GBLA and BSA) to the health area (HIPAA), including GDPR, NIST ISO, among others. . All of this in an easy-to-use business environment.
In addition, especially for robust and well-structured projects, the search for partners is quite assertive in identifying the business need and then converting it into a digital process.
Thus, companies' concern with paperless adoption must go beyond concerns about expenses and project the gains in productivity and modernization that this represents. And, every day, better processes will be implemented and departments will be more optimized, resulting in an ascending digital evolution.
*Mario Gama is Solution Sales Lead Services at SoftwareONE
Notice: The opinion presented in this article is the responsibility of its author and not of ABES - Brazilian Association of Software Companies
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