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Over the past couple of years, the world underwent a revolution in the way it regarded the consumption of single use plastics, where the issue became a sincere point of reflection for businesses and consumers alike. We asked ‘Is it really necessary to be using this much plastic’ after seeing sobering images of wildlife around the world needlessly suffering as a result of this waste.

When it comes to paper, the environmental message has been highlighted for decades, but today in the middle of a global pandemic, it’s become about much more than the environmental impacts. With so much digital transformation technology in the mainstream now, the big question should be:

‘Do we have a legitimate reason to be passing around paperwork anymore?’

Here’s eight reasons why the answer is ‘NO’

• Paperwork requires unnecessary person to person contact. At a time when reduced contact is vital to protecting public health in the UK, processes that involve handing physical documents to each other creates unnecessary risk.
• It creates additional travel with people having to ‘swing by the office’ to collect and deliver paperwork.
• It’s incredibly time inefficient, requiring a process of writing down, transcribing and filing, every time. Imagine the sigh of relief from admins around the UK if forms automatically populated reports and filed themselves.
• It’s environmentally unfriendly- a single sheet of paper uses 3 gallons of water to produce, not to mention the other resources and chemicals also used in production.
• It’s expensive- the simple process of buying and printing on paper is outdated and costly.
• You can’t share the information with multiple people at the same time, it’s locked on a document that can only be passed around for reading.
• You’re at the mercy of the author’s handwriting. If they’re writing in a hurry, you’d best get your glasses out.
• If you lose it, it’s gone. When so much focus get’s placed on disaster recovery for electronic data, what excuse is there for not having the same safeguards for paper?

On top of these reasons, our research with YouGov this year also found that a quarter of the UK workforce would find paperwork less stressful if it was digital.

Companies have been clinging on to paper-based processes for centuries now, but the advances in technology enabling cloud storage, instant communication and automatic analysis and reporting has gradually consigned ‘paperwork’ to history. Now, coupled with requirements to reconfigure ways of working to reduce contamination and support remote working, passing around shared documents has become a redundant process. .

Inventor of the Lightbulb Thomas Edison once said “There’s a better way of doing things – find it”

See what other issues Re-flow helps with when you switch to a digital solution.

Using Re-flow, you can make paper 'that stuff we used to use'

Why you'll never miss paper with Re-flow:

1. Get the message distributed immediately by pushing out to the field in an app that notifies workers of an update and syncs to the latest version.
2. Re-flow’s digital data is available in real-time and accessible to multiple parties simultaneously.
3. Eliminating the requirement for distributing, chasing up, transcribing and filing paper information saves around 21% of admin workers’ time.
4. Lost in the back of a van? A lot of forms end their days this way, with 7.5% of all forms going missing. Digital records are with you forever if you’re backing them up, so no need to worry about fire, theft and damage.
5. Our digital forms are custom configured for you every time they’re added to your system, so they will do all sorts of cool stuff that’s specific to your business.
6. Digital form submission is instant and automatically populates your reports with easily searchable data.
7. With a digital alternative you can significantly reduce human errors using drop down selections, multiple choice responses or even icons
8. Re-flow’s forms speak to each other, so as users submit information in forms, it is pumped into your custom reports.

Are you fed up with making countless phone calls, sending emails and fumbling through text messages? Get instant visibility on communications and progress. Our software specialists are ready to help - reach out today and request a demo, or give us a call.