Take Your Business Digital in 2021 

Going digital. Going paperless. Office digitization. All three terms mean approximately the same thing, and the idea, process, and result are the same. Research shows that going paperless and transitioning into a digital workspace can help a business to save money in everyday budgets and tax breaks, increase overall productivity, and have a positive environmental impact. If you are ready to take your office digital, get in contact with our information management specialists to get started. Our team of experts will guide you through the complete process.

Why haven’t more companies made the jump to digital offices and record keeping yet? For some, they don’t know how to begin or understand the process. To help with your transition, we have outlined the process, with a full explanation of paperless benefits. 

Going Digital 101 

1.     Q: What does going digital/paperless mean?

A: Going digital or going paperless is a process for converting paper files into digital formats, uploading the digitized documents to cloud storage or a hard drive, eliminating paper hard copies, and then conducting most, if not all, business transactions digitally.

2.     Q: Who should go digital/paperless?

A: Every business and institution that can go paperless, should go paperless. It can take a considerable amount of time, seem very daunting, and be quite tedious, but the payoff is definitely worth the effort. The Storage Quarters team will help you through the process at every step of the way so that you never feel lost. 

3.     Q: Why should my office going digital/paperless?

A: Going digital makes sense for any business for many reasons.

3a.  Financial – Your business can save money in ways that you’ve never imagined, just by going paperless. The cost of printing supplies will decrease. Fewer printer repairs, less costly consumables such as paper and toner, and let’s not forget one of the most significant expenses associated with printed records – storage space. In some verticals such as the medical and legal fields, paper records have legally required minimum time periods to be retained.

3b.  Time and Productivity – Your employees likely spend a lot of time waiting for documents to be printed and sent out, returned, files to be updated, the appropriate paper path to be traveled, and then filing and storing the paperwork for future use. This process can be extensive and time-consuming, even for inter-office paperwork. Exponential amounts of time are added when paperwork needs to be sent back and forth to clients, customers, or patients. 

Cut down on wasted time and money with a digital office. Employees will be able to download files onto their terminals from central servers, shared via software suites such as Microsoft Office 365 or Google’s office suite.

When files are online, file-sharing is as easy as clicking a link and filling out the form online. If needed, a digital signature is added to the document. Often, the updated document is automatically updated in your system.

Save days, or even weeks of waiting around and potentially missing important deadlines, simply by having order forms, requisition papers, POs, and other documents digitally available.

If your office has gone digital, and your field is compatible with it, going digital may even allow for your employees to work from home, further reducing excess resource usage. Having digital files enable an employee to share documents with other employees located across the city or across the world.

3c.  Environmental – The positive impact of a paperless office cannot be overstated or overestimated. One study suggested that the average American office worker goes through 10,000 sheets of paper in just one year. The production of 10,000 sheets of paper requires 2,500 trees to be cut down, not to mention the chemicals and other byproducts of actually producing the paper.

To put things in perspective for the environmentally conscious, to produce 10,000 sheets of paper for one office worker, the following resources are required –

• 2,500 trees,

• 56,000 gallons of oil,

• 595,000 kilowatts of energy, and

• 450 cubic yards of landfill 

Going paperless would significantly help reduce landfill waste, as it accounts for 25% of that waste. Reducing it by just 10% would eliminate 1.6 million tons of greenhouse gas.

3d.  Security – Going paperless provides two kinds of security:

1. Storing your paperwork in the cloud guarantees that you’ll always be able to access it. Never worry about forgetting a file or having an outdated presentation during an important business meeting. For those in the medical field, patient records are updated immediately, reducing the chance of potentially harmful mistakes.

2. Your files are now stored off-site, so in case of catastrophic damage to your office and/or storage space, years of valuable paperwork remains safe and secure. The last thing that any business owner wants to worry about are fires and floods. 

4.     Q: When should my office go digital/paperless? 

A: Right now! Give us a call at (516) 794-7300. All kidding aside, if your company has an ebb and flow schedule as many businesses tend to, pick a time when you can devote a good amount of attention to the process. We do everything that we can to make the process as stress-free as possible, but if you run an accounting firm, we’d strongly advise waiting until after tax season rather than beginning the transition process in March. 

5.     Q: How does my office go digital/paperless?

A: Let the document management experts at Storage Quarters handle every aspect of your company’s digital transition. Our complement of information management services enables us to seamlessly execute all of the steps needed to go paperless, under one roof.

6.     Q: Is digitization possible for medical records?

A: Yes! Storage Quarters is pleased to offer custodial records management for doctors and medical facilities. Since medical records are legally required to be held for a minimum period of time, paper files can quickly multiply, resulting in a large amount of files and wasted space.

Storage Quarters can store medical records indefinitely, utilizing a highly organized filing system where each box of of documents receives a unique barcode and SKU for easy tracking. As each of the documents gets scanned into our system, we can easily integrate the scanned files into an existing EMR (electronic medical records) system or create a new one. In their digital form, electronic medical records can be stored indefinitely, secured behind multiple layers of protection. 

Once the scanning and digitization is completed, the hard copies can either be securely destroyed or placed into storage. If shredded, all of the cardboard and shredded paper residue is then baled up and stored in our secure facility until it is transported to a recycling center.

• None of our work is ever outsourced.

• Our team members are screened, have passed background checks, and have been trained to work with sensitive documents.

• We have secure storage facilities in Garden City, NY, available for storing your hard copies. These storage facilities are monitored 24/7 by on-site security, fire, and police.

• Storage Quarters employs our own IT team that is dedicated to protecting your files in our cloud storage. We have the most advanced firewalls and disaster recovery programs in place to safeguard your files.

• Documents and CDs that are transported to and shredded in our facility are done so within full HIPAA guideline compliance.

• If you need documents destroyed but can’t come here, we will deploy our mobile shredding truck. We can transport documents back to our facility to be destroyed or we will destroy them on-site so you can witness it. After the documents are shredded, you receive a Certificate of Destruction, in case of legal proceedings where proof of destruction is required. All transport and shredding is done within HIPAA compliant guidelines.

• We are located just outside of the New York City metropolitan area, less than 20 miles from Midtown Manhattan, and so we are uniquely positioned to service both New York City and Long Island businesses and residents.

• We have more than 35 years of experience that we leverage for your benefit. 

Digital offices offer many advantages over a traditional office space, from financial savings, a positive effect on the environment, and improving office productivity. Storage Quarters offers a full range of services to assist with your office’s transition to digital record keeping. From secure scanning and digitization to our mobile shredding truck and convenient office-sized destruction consoles and destruction bins, we are able to accommodate the needs of any business or institution, in any vertical.

If you are ready to begin or if you have more questions, contact the information management specialists at Storage Quarters today to learn more about the digitization process or to get your free quote for our services. You may also call (516) 794-7300 or email info@storagequarters.com to begin the process of going paperless. We look forward to hearing from you and introducing your office to the technological advantages of the 21st century.