Who nowadays has the luxury of a clerk or PA?
Surveys show that senior managers in most modern
businesses carry out their own administration
including such tasks as diary management,
correspondence and document management. And yet the
‘paperless office’ is still an unrealized vision for
most enterprises and will be for quite some time to
come.
So how do we track, store and manage all of our
electronic and printed matter so that it is readily
available when we need it?
Red IT knows the answer and would like to
cordially invite you to a seminar,
CREATING THE VIRTUAL PA,
where we will demonstrate how directors and senior
managers who are self sufficient in most other areas
of admin can
free up huge amounts of time through efficient
document management and retrieval.
80% Of Directors Waste Up To An Hour A Day Looking
For Documents
Searching for documents is costing
Small-to-Medium Enterprises (SMEs) a staggering
£42.2million per day in lost revenue, according to
independent research released last week. The survey
revealed that managers and directors are wasting
valuable time trying to locate documents that may
have been mis-filed, moved to another location or
simply lost, costing businesses dearly. Yet despite
this, according to the managers/directors
questioned, less than one in four UK SMEs have
replaced their paper filing with digital document
management, making it no surprise that only 7% of
companies operate a predominantly paperless office.
With more than 4.5 million SMEs in the UK, and the
survey finding that 80% of managers and directors
waste up to one hour (worth £88 on average*) of
their time per day looking for documents, it is
little wonder that this wasted time is costing
businesses £42.2 million. But this is really just
the tip of the iceberg, if the number of director
and managers in each company is considered; for
example, for a company of 120 people with 10
directors and managers, the cost to that business
could be up to £4400 per week.
The root cause of this inefficiency is paper; just
7% of SMEs have 91% or more of their documents saved
electronically, even though paper documents can
easily be lost or mis-filed due to human error. With
only 6% of survey respondents stating that their
organisation doesn’t have a digital document
management system because there’s no point in
creating a paperless office, the question of why
more companies have not yet taken the plunge and
become paperless leaps to the fore, particularly
considering the growing need to efficiently store
and retrieve documents for compliance and audit
purposes.
Spending time on business development was the top
response (31%) to the question of what managers and
directors would do if they had additional time
during their working day. This was followed by
completing admin tasks (26%) and going home on time
(21%).
“With the credit crunch here, every business
needs to review staff efficiency. It’s terrible to
think that managers and directors in SMEs are
wasting valuable time that should be spent
developing their business,” commented Ara
Martirossian, CEO, Red IT Solutions Limited.
“Document management is now very affordable to
even the smallest business.
For as little as £1 per day
per user this problem can be eradicated.”
George Derbyshire, Chief Executive of The National
Federation of Enterprise Agencies (NFEA), says,
“This research is quite frightening and is an
example of how everyday inefficiencies can have a
very damaging effect on small businesses. It's vital
to prioritise on a daily basis, but it is also
important to take time out from time to time and
review your processes and systems to ensure that
they are supporting you - not holding you back.”
On the plus side, 23% of respondents have already
implemented a digital document management system,
with nearly two thirds of SMEs (64%) agreeing that
this solution enabled them to look for or search
through archive documents more quickly and easily.
16% cited decreasing the amount of storage space
paid for as a major benefit, with one in 10
implementing a solution in order to meet
regulations, such as the Data Protection Act.
For those SMEs that don’t yet have a document
management system, one third were apprehensive about
high upfront expenditure; a worry that may be
unfounded as it has been shown that
ROI can be achieved within
six months with this kind of system.
Seminar details
CREATING THE VIRTUAL PA
seminars are scheduled as shown. Please click on the
link to register your interest :
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