Retro 1800s Business Practices Can Cost Your Company Money!

Trivia time! Do you know what device was invented in 1892 that changed the face of offices around the world? If you guessed the fax machine then you're close, but you need to think further ahead by almost 50 years (the first fax machine was patented in 1843 by Alexander Bain). More influential than even the fax machine is the file cabinet, established in 1892.

File cabinets and fax machines both revolutionized their time, but now that we're living in the next millennia, it's safe to say that the time of these two innovations has passed. Yet, how many modern offices contain a fax machine that feeds paper into file cabinets? If this describes your office, then you might as well equip your staff with green eyeshades and mustache wax because you're doing business in the 1800s!

Cheap 1800s Technology is Expensive to Operate
These technologies are outdated because handling files digitally is a much more efficient way of doing things. When it comes to document gathering and transferring tasks like filing away papers, digging through the file cabinet, and sending and receiving faxes (sending a fax averages 30 seconds per page), you may be surprised to learn that an employee in a "modern office" can spend as much as 90% of their time just handling documents!

Considering all the trips an employee makes to and from the file cabinet, all the time spent digging through files to locate a specific document, and all the time spent organizing file cabinets by moving old documents to storage boxes, and the fact that you're paying an employee to do all of this work, it makes sense that the standard-sized file cabinet has $25,000 worth of company time sunk into it! We're pretty sure that you can think of better things to spend $25,000 on than a crusty old file cabinet.

The Digital Revolution Trumps the Industrial Revolution Every Time
In addition to the waste of time and money it is to manually handle paper documents, relying on paper can be extremely limiting. For example, let's say that your business takes you on the road and you wind up needing a copy of an important document buried deep in a file cabinet at your office. Your only option would be to give your office a call and have someone on staff retrieve the document and then find a way to get it to you. This would either be done by faxing it to you, or scanning it and then attaching the file to an email. Both of these processes are time consuming.

Having your business go paperless is a great solution that will save you money and give everyone on your staff more time to invest in tasks that make you money. By taking advantage of digital solutions like fax servers and cloud computing, you will be able to ditch the fax machine and file cabinet and even save some trees while you're at it. Not to mention it's MUCH easier to back up your data when it's digital.

A fax server solution from Preferred will allow you to send and receive faxes as PDF files from your email inbox. Another good paperless solution is storing your company's files to the cloud, which allows anybody on your staff to access any file, on any device, from anywhere, saving you the hassle of telegraphing your straw-hat-wearing clerk and giving them the "what's for" about sending you the printed form via Pony Express.

To equip your office with technology from this century, give Preferred a call at 708-781-7110.