CAN PAPERLESS EPOD REALLY SAVE 20,000 TREES & 3 MILLION WORKING HOURS PER ANNUM?
At Touchstar, we believe it is important for us to always look for
new ways in which we can improve on our sustainability
and diminish our environmental impact. Looking back on recent years,
we have revamped our online facilities to include client portals and electronic
document availability. Thanks to our new internal paperless systems and online
customer portal, making payments and reviewing the progress of repair
work online, not only makes life easier for our customers, but is
also more cost efficient.
Not only are these online services more accessible
and convenient for our customers, they are also hugely contributing
to helping reduce our carbon footprint. Many of the IT systems within our sales portfolio also offer considerable environmental benefits,
primarily by encouraging clients to go paperless. In turn, our clients can gain multiple
operational advantages as well as being able to demonstrate their own green
credentials to the wider business community.
Some key statistics about the environmental impact of paper
According to the Environmental
Protection Agency;
- A typical
mid-sized business will send 18,000 invoices to its customers every
quarter. This equates to a massive 2 tonnes of paper
invoices and envelopes each year!
- A single
tree produces enough oxygen every day to support at least 2 human
beings. Chopping down trees decreases the amount of oxygen in the
ecosystem.
- By striving
to go paperless, an average organisation can save around 48 trees a year
in paper.
- Paper
consumption has tripled since 1960 and the US alone generates 85 million tons
of paper into the waste stream (The average U.S. officer worker is estimated to
print 10,000 pages per year)
- The
environmental impact of producing every 10 million pages is estimated at;
-
2,500
trees
-
56,000
gallons of oil
-
450
cubic yards of landfill space
-
595,000
KW (kilowatts) of energy
Why is there still a perceived need for paper in
the business work flow?
Many people still believe
that legally binding documents must be signed with wet ink signatures. As a
result, this leads to printing masses of paper that are couriered to customer
locations, signed and stored in filing cabinets and vaults. However,
legislation has been passed to legalise and enforce electronic signatures. It
is no longer uncommon to receive a shipment by signing on an electronic pad
that records your wet electronic signature. Using
software technologies that capture your wet electronic signature just makes
business sense!
The Paperless Future
Hardware technologies
such as tablet PCs and cell phones allow for the creation, manipulation and
distribution of electronic documents. Software technologies such as electronic
fax, email transmission, document management, secure backup and online storage
are creating a strong case for removing the clutter and shuffle of paper in the
work flow. Packaging the hardware and software technologies into a unique
mobile computing solution allows businesses and individuals to be mobile, to be
green and go paperless.
A number of benefits are
achieved by going paperless:
- Reduce
business cost associated with paper, printers, copiers, fax machines, ink and
toner cartridges
- Eliminate
filing cabinets and reduce office space
- Conduct
business in a mobile environment resulting in faster responses to customers
- Increase
efficiency of your staff by removing the time spent searching for and sending
documents
- Present
a professional image to your customers with mobile computing solutions
- Create
faster business work flow by eliminating the time wasted on getting paper
signatures on contracts and forms that need to be hand delivered
- Secure
backup of all documents
- Real
time updates and delivery of documents
- Conduct
business environmentally friendly and brag about it
- And
much more…
Paperless
EPOD is here now! So, what are its environmental benefits?
Touchstar are a leading provider of Electronic Proof
of Delivery (EPOD) systems which are purposefully designed to digitise the
paper trail … but can we even begin to establish a clear argument for
environmental impact? We think we can! Each client delivery scenario will
entail processes that would have formerly been paper-based, principal amongst
these are the vehicle check and the delivery note. Our typical client will make, on average, 25
deliveries per day. With a paper-based system we estimate that at both the
delivery point and within the back office, circa 52 items of paper per day will
be generated.
Touchstar has a current installed base of around 5000 trucks
using our system. If we assume the trucks are delivering for around 320 days
per annum that’s over 83 million sheets of paper generated by a paper-based
system … or 83 million sheets of paper saved by those who’ve adopted paperless
EPOD. That’s the equivalent of 20,000 trees and so we believe Touchstar clients
deserve a big pat on the back!
With paperless EPOD it’s not just the environment that
gains, there are massive operational benefits for the client too. If we take
another key criteria of ‘time’ and apply a similar thought process and
calculation, the results are equally staggering. A typical process flow for a
delivery scenario will entail multiple activities such as data entry, planning,
paperwork printing, collation, driver interaction, customer interaction,
reconciliation etc. The exact timings will be dependent upon the type of
organisation and the delivery scenario. Touchstar business analysts have
assisted organisations in attempting precise calculations to assist
cost-benefit exercises. This experience allows us to state, with confidence,
that utilising paper-based non-automated procedures for the delivery processes
highlighted will equate to a minimum of five minutes per delivery. If we
extrapolate this out in the same way as for paper production the result is 25
deliveries per client x 320 days = 8000 deliveries. In terms of time expended
that’s 40,000 minutes per annum. Again if we consider the current Touchstar
installed client base (of 5000) that’s 200 million minutes per annum, or over
3.3m working hours. These are hours expended
for users of paper-based systems but as Touchstar EPOD systems digitise those
processes entirely and eliminate the associated time that’s a net SAVING
statistic.
We’re extremely proud to be able to quote these kind of statistics and
delighted that we can impact both the logistics industry and the environment in
such a positive way. These impacts will only grow in tandem with the growth in
our client base, meaning that genuinely ‘everyone is a winner’!