The following are a few notes about the top three cost drivers that are driven by paper from a session we delivered.

  1. Paper = More people. If you have manual processes the primary mechanism to scale up and out is adding staff. The more people you have the more auditing fees you will incur to make sure your processes are complaint. You will need manual processes to track the versions of paper information and will need processes to reconcile the correct version of the information.
  2. Paper = Slow Collaboration. Related to the version tracking problems of paper noted earlier you have many people that need to share the correct information simultaneously. If you are working with a team it is more efficient to work electronically so you can provide a subset of information to the proper persons.
  3. Paper = Lawsuit risks. The data on paper is not encrypted. If you have sensitive information like medical data, credit card information, or personal identification data on paper and loose it you are subject to reporting requirements and various fines and penalties. You need to invest in physical security measures to lock down the information and monitor who accesses it.