Return on Investment
Advances in technology and the increased popularity of the use of mobile devices in business are significantly reducing paper dependency in business. The savings on reducing paper consumption in small 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 There are many costs associated with paper-based forms such as storage, lost documents, postage, updating obsolete or out-of-date records plus incurring additional charges or loss of business due to labour inefficiency such as manual data entry errors.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:
- Form storage: From physical filling cabinets to floor space, the cost of filling paper-based forms coupled with inefficiencies such as storing duplicated files (as much as 45%6 of files in some organisations) paper storage is both inefficient and expensive.
- Lost or misfiled forms: Even with the most efficient filing processes, documents are lost on a regular basis. In fact, approximately 3% of all paper forms are filed incorrectly, and almost 8% of all paper forms are eventually lost. A study of managers found that they spend an average of three hours per week looking for paper that has been misfiled, mislabelled, or lost.6
- 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- Wasted Forms: While approximately 83% of all business documents are forms, one third of the printed forms become outdated before they are used.6
- 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 as much as £17,500* a year for a small 10 man team.
| Traditional | WorkMobile® | |
|---|---|---|
| Printing and paper costs (3 part NCR)1 | 11p | 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 1000 pack size) | n/a | 14p |
| Total Cost per sheet | 178p | 14p |
| Saving per sheet | 165p | |
| Storage costs/year/sheet4 | 5p | 0p |
| Storage costs per year | £19,302 | £0 |
| Savings per 10 man team per year | £17,576 |
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 10 mobile workers filling in 4 forms per day.
6 – Reference: http://sustainability.tufts.edu/downloads/BusinessGuidetoPaperReduction.pdf