Is going "green" good for business?

I saw a ridiculous commercial the other day. A bank advertised they were "green" because they no longer send paper statements. Really? That’s not green. That’s a cost-cutting measure thinly veiled as a green initiative.

Does anyone not see right through commercials like that? Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for going green. If every company in America committed to bettering the environment, the benefits would be enormous. Unfortunately though, I believe many companies refuse because they don’t believe it will help the bottom line.

That’s where they’re wrong. Many times, going green also saves money and increases productivity. For example, going paperless (as mentioned above) is a great benefit to the environment, as well as your business. Here are a few reasons:

Saves time – I’ve been in offices filled with filing cabinets. Employees spend loads of time putting paper into files and pulling paper out of files. It’s a colossal waste of time and space.

Increases productivity – Going paperless requires integrated systems, which eliminates the need for data re-entry. Since all your systems communicate with each other, employees don’t have to enter the same data in multiple systems. This increases productivity and eliminates data entry errors.

Saves money – This should be fairly obvious. You won’t need to buy as much paper, cabinets, printer toner, etc… Additionally, digital storage is cheaper than physical storage. An office that relies on paper must regularly move old files off site and pay for storage. A paperless office can set up nightly offsite backups, which are not only more efficient, they are cheaper as well.

Simple recovery – Pretend there’s a fire in your office and your files are destroyed. What do you do? If you work in a paperless office, you restore your off-site backups and you’ll be up and running in no time. If you don’t understand the importance of quick recovery, read this true story.

If you are interested in going paperless, but aren’t quite sure how to get there, let us know. We provide the tools to bring your paper-based forms, applications, invoices, etc… to the web, the training to get you started quickly,and the consultants to guide you through the process. Please fill out this short form to learn more.


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About the author: Joe Stangarone is president and founder of mrc, a global software company which created the award-winning web application development tool, m-Power. m-Power reduces web application development time, lowers development costs, and increases productivity.