What are the advantages of dematerialization?

One of the main advantages of documents in digital format is that they don't take up any space. Archiving paper documents takes up an enormous amount of space. Companies produce thousands of documents a month, and storing them sometimes fills entire rooms with archives that have never been consulted (known as dead archives), mixed with paper documents that are still current (known as living archives)!
With dematerialization, all documents fit into an online or physical storage space. In France, the tax authorities recognize thatan electronic document - whether a copy or an original - has the same legal value as a physical document, provided that certain digitization and storage criteria are met.

In some cases, this space saving can considerably reduce a company's real-estate costs. No more need for rooms dedicated solely to document storage. And yet, for a small or medium-sized company, real estate costs often represent a significant proportion of overall compatibility. Given the current trend towards telecommuting dematerialization could even eventually lead to companies doing without offices.

Some use external archiving services, but this too comes at a cost and often lacks flexibility. Imagine all your company's data and documents available in a single database, accessible via a web browser at any time!

What's more, paper documents also represent costs. Paper, ink, printers, scanners, staplers, postage: when a company produces hundreds or thousands of documents a day, the bill can quickly soar. With dematerialization, these costs are simply eliminated.

Last but not least, an electronic document management systemconsiderably boosts employee productivity. By archiving electronic documents, you can find the information you need in just a few clicks. Likewise, the filing, tracking and distribution of digital documents is mostly automatic, unlike paper documents, which require time-consuming management.

For example, whether they relate to the company's past or its activity, documents can be filed, reconciled (BL and invoice reconciliation), compared (expenses with a given supplier), linked (such as an HR file with all the documents relating to an employee since he joined the company...).

By streamlining company processes, employees are able to concentrate on high value-added tasks. The result : productivity rises significantly, as does employee commitment. Employees often ask for processes to be dematerialized in order to get rid of repetitive, low-value-added tasks.