In today’s fast past paced world, supply chain operations need to stay up to date and take advantage of every development available. An aspect often overlooked by companies that is beneficial and a way to improve overall performance is going paperless. In order to give your supply chain a boost, automating business processes and eliminating paper may be the best and quick solution.
Let’s look at the top five advantages of going paperless and how they will improve your supply chain.
Greater Productivity
Going paperless saves a lot of time as employees aren’t tasked with filling paperwork. This benefit then enables them to be given more strategic projects and they are also able to focus on customer intimacy with improved personal attention. Without paper, the routine transactions in your business flow without any unnecessary stops too along the way, making sure that the supply chain moves efficiently and quickly.
Through a paperless system, employees also gain more control in terms of resolving issues. This means that exceptions can be resolved quickly and accurately without having to go through a pile of routine transactions.
Speed and Responsiveness
Paperless systems help eliminate delays that take place while paperwork moves through the process. On the other hand, having paperless processes that move at the speed of data instead, helps your supply chain pick up its pace. That way you are able to react faster to customer requests and can deliver the most recent requirements information to every member of the chain immediately.
Pushing information through the supply chain quickly is surely beneficial because it does not keep customers waiting. To stay ahead of your completion and stand out, it is always important to do whatever you can to appeal to your customers with something they deem worth implementing.
Security and Compliance
Data integrity has been mentioned as one of the top issues affecting companies. Paperless systems solves data integrity issues automatically and helps get rid of any problems with financial or regulatory compliance that can be caused by misfiled papers.
Going paperless also introduces the need for eSignatures and employee certifications on completion of process steps. In a paperless system, it is always easy to locate the right document and there is never an issue with legibility or timing. This kind of system can even track training requirements and make sure that your team has undergone required training and certifications.
Supports Lean Initiatives
The main core of lean is to get rid of waste and non-value added activities. Although it is necessary for financial reporting and regulatory compliance to file documents, it becomes a non-value added procedure if you may never use them again. Automating processes such as accounts payable, invoicing, quality reporting and order entry helps eliminate hard work and waste. With such, you will be able to save time and resources; improve order cycle times, and advance your overall productivity too, causing supply chain effectiveness to take a giant step forward.
Environmentally Friendly
Automating your business process so you use less paper will definitely help your business become environmentally friendly. Going green will not only help you save trees, but it will also save you money on printers, toners and space as you will not have to make room for file cabinets.
The above-mentioned benefits are not the only advantages of going paperless in your supply chain but are certainly the most valuable. They can help you increase customer intimacy, reduce overall lead times, improve communication and collaboration, and also aid in reducing costs.
Also find out about the 4 Ways Your Warehouse Can Be More Environmentally Friendly!
Source: allthingssupplychain