Return on Investment
The savings on reducing paper consumption in large businesses can impact on the bottom line however the costs of paper-based forms often extends far beyond just purchasing paper, printing reports or order pads. There are many costs associated with paper-based forms such as storage, lost documents, postage, updating obsolete or out-of-date records plus incurring additional charges or loss of business due to labour inefficiency such as manual data entry errors.
Example of costs incurred with paper-based forms
Example of costs incurred with paper-based forms:
- Storage Space6: To store 2 million paper documents, a business can expect to spend between £25,000 and £40,000 on filing cabinets and floor space. Those same files could fit on fewer than ten CD-ROMs.
- Lost or misfiled forms: A study6 of managers found that they spend an average of three hours per week looking for paper that has been misfiled, mislabeled, or lost.
- Postage: Distributing documents electronically rather than via the postal system can significantly reduce postage costs.
- Wasted Forms: While approximately 83% of all business documents are forms, one third of the printed forms become outdated before they are used1.
- Labour Inefficiency: Automated processes can increase productivity by 50% plus reduce the number of errors due to incorrect or mistyped data entry.
How much could you save?
By switching from paper-based forms to WorkMobile® you could be saving over £85,000* a year for a team of 50 mobile workers.
| Traditional | WorkMobile® | |
|---|---|---|
| Printing and paper costs (3 part NCR)1 | 5p | 0p |
| Data entry costs2 | 150p | 0p |
| Re-keying costs due to mis-entry or mis-recording (10%) | 15p | 0p |
| Postage costs3 | 2p | 0p |
| WorkMobile® Credit (based on 10,000 pack size) | n/a | 10p |
| Total Cost per sheet | 172p | 14p |
| Saving per sheet | 162p | |
| Storage costs/year/sheet4 | 5p | 0p |
| Storage costs per year | £26,000 | £0 |
| Costs per year of average 50 man mobile workforce ( 52,000 forms) 5 | £92,040 | £5,200 |
| Savings per 50 man team per year | £86,840 |
1 – 100 x 50 sheet NCR pads at 589GBP
2 – Data Entry Clerk 9GBP/hour cost to company – 1 sheet for data entry takes 10 minutes. 9GBP = 1.50 per sheet
3 – Postage. Assume 20 sheets in an envelope for a first class stamp. 46p
4 – 4000 Sheets per filing cabinet taking 0.5m2. 200GBP price for 4 draw cabinet + 15GBP sq ft office space. Cost for 0.5 x 0.5 (0.5 sq m = 2.1 sql ft) 30 GBP per annum for filing cabinet
5 – Average company of 50 mobile workers filling in 4 forms per day.
6 – Reference: http://sustainability.tufts.edu/downloads/BusinessGuidetoPaperReduction.pdf