How Entrepreneurs Can Get More Vacation Time by Going Paperless
Want to get more vacation time? Well, who doesn’t? What most people don’t know, however, is that they can get more vacation time by going paperless through a document management system.
Having your own successful business is probably the fulfillment of a long-held dream. Like most entrepreneurs, you are proud, happy, and exhausted.
Fulfilling dreams is hard work, and if you have only a small staff, or no staff, you may be afraid to go away on vacations. You want and need to make as much profit as possible, so you keep sticking around, day after day, and year after year. Your life is your business.
Take Carlene Patterson of Ascension Financial, for instance. She was able to spend more time with her family and add an extra layer of flexibility to her lifestyle by mobilizing her office. The best part? She didn’t have to overhaul her existing process with clients, she simply changed the medium by which she worked with them.
Repeat After Me, “I Will Take a Vacation.”
Yes, you are self-employed, but your business will not fall apart if you take some time off, especially if you implement a document management solution. Once you’ve gone paperless, you’ll have more flexibility for vacation. And aside from that, it’s not just an issue of vacation time–it’s an issue of freeing up the time and flexibility you need to pursue all things in life that do not pertain directly to your work.
If you’re able to carry your work with you conveniently on your phone, you can spread out your workload so it doesn’t overwhelm you in brief, intense stints. In fact, it’s literally the difference between carrying your filing cabinets on your back and having them placed securely in your pocket. This video explains why.
Your Customers Will Be Happier Because You’ll Be Able to Meet Their Needs
You can keep your business running smoother and your customers happier with document management software. You can install a program or implement your paperless solution via the cloud or use it on your own server in the form of on premises. Either, way there are benefits to each, as enumerated in this on premises vs cloud solution document management article.
If you are sipping a margarita on the beach and a pressing business issue arises, you can hop online and work with your staff or client to fix the need.
You can pull up customer records, invoices, tax returns, agreements, etc. You can store emails, PDFs, images, and audio/video files. With alerts, document retention, digital signatures, workflow and integration with QuickBooks and Microsoft Office software, automation and digital files become easier to manage.
Creating a secure web portal for your customers is also a great way to free you from the office. If you have a site set up where your customers can access, upload and manage their own files in connection with you, it saves both paper and time.
The customers won’t have to wait to receive their information in the mail, fax or courier, and you don’t have to personally fulfill the task. Your customers are happy because their needs are being met. They have all their personal account information at their fingertips, and that easy access makes them feel important and cared for.
They are your priority, and you’ve made them feel that way. In the process, you’ve reduced costs and earned lots of vacation time.
Speaking of Reduced Expenses
electronic records remove the need for more expensive, commercial real estate. Security is always an issue with physical files as well, and retrieving information means wasted labor. In order to get more vacation time by going paperless, all document management system users must leverage the system to their benefit.
And in an information economy relying on the efficiency of labor to leverage the gems of truth in all the proliferated data, anything that gets in the way of optimal business processes has to be jettisoned for the greater good of small to mid-sized businesses and consumers as a whole.
Paper regularly ends up in the wrong place because everyone uses different nomenclature for storing. It’s as arbitrary as it is pointless to rely on outdated information management mediums. Most companies are slow to adopt these technologies across an array of industries, so the room to profit is great.
For compliance reasons, many businesses also need to keep their files for years. Going digital solves many problems for you, your business and your customers. They can access their information through the portal, and you can go back years to find documents with no trouble.
Everything will be backed up and secure, so both you and your customers are protected. Given that consumers are more worried about their information than ever, document management solutions are viable as mediums connecting enterprise security with the point of the sale solutions.
Small Business Profitability Can Be Fragile
But it doesn’t have to be, even when you get more vacation time by going paperless. So your reluctance to leave your baby in the hands of others is understandable.
However, if you refuse to take time off and recharge your batteries, your business is going to be run by a tired and grumpy boss, and nobody wants to work for one of those, even if pay is commensurate to the level of stress you carry on a daily basis.
Given that so many employees are already unable to take leave from their work for familial reasons, perpetually working for a demanding boss, even under circumstances that should permit paid leave, can be demanding and take a personal toll on work-life balance.
You started your own business to make money and to have more freedom, so enslaving yourself is self-defeating. Get your document management software up and running and take off to parts unknown.
It’s not like you’re going cold turkey. You’ll have the Cloud as your safety net. You can get more vacation time by going paperless. All you have to do is take the first step with eFileCabinet.