Don’t Put a Premium on Paperless
Posted by Michael Gardner on Fri, Dec 31, 2010 @ 01:15 PM
Our National Alliance Partner TELUS Communications recently came into some heat for introducing a fee for customers who have not yet opted to receive their bills in an electronic format. TELUS, along with many other carriers I may add, are charging a $2.00 fee for customers to receive their bills on paper via regular mail. Is this putting a premium on paperless like the press claims? The short answer is no.
a) Paperless billing saves the carrier money
b) Paperless billing offers the carrier’s customers greater, more convenient, options for receiving their statements
c) Paperless billing is better for the environment
So why even offer paper statements even for an additional fee?
Paperless technology is being adopted at an ever increasing rate by businesses because it lowers the cost of business, improves the quality of business, and is easier for organizations to work with than paper. These three elements not only greatly increase the odds of successful adoption they also just make smart business. But, going paperless does introduce a new problem – it brings focus on the cost of business where we continue to maintain paper.
One of the greatest challenges of the paperless revolution is that there is a perception that the cost of operating on paper is negligible or even free. The simple fact is that this isn’t true. Paper is expensive; really expensive. The cost of producing, distributing, completing, processing, storing and maintaining paper documents is on average well over $25. For most organizations this cost has been absorbed as part of general overhead and therefore has no visibility. Once we take a part of the process paperless all of this begins to change.
If you were operating a business where every single customer received their monthly statement in a fully automated electronic format, but a customer came to you and asked if they could have a statement instead, would you do it? You probably would, because that’s good customer service. But would you charge them a service fee for this? Maybe not for the first customer, but once you have enough asking for it you probably would consider the fee. Why? Because these paper outliers are costing your organization money you will try and find a way to recover the cost or you will eliminate the offering to eliminate the cost. Don’t charge for it, just eliminate it.
Going paperless will change your business, and you have to be prepared for those changes.
- Adopting fully paperless business process automation, not just limiting yourself to digital signature or document management, will dramatically reduce your operational costs
- Holding onto your legacy methods for processing using paper will cut into your savings and will create an operational burden you don’t need and likely can’t afford to maintain
- Going paperless in one part of your business will change the expectations your customers have of you and they will expect you to go paperless and adopt other improvements in the rest of your business
Years ago Starbucks would double your cup (put one cup inside of another) so you wouldn’t burn your hands. Later they switched to recycled paper sleeves to accomplish the same thing. The result was a net reduction in costs on a per transaction basis for Starbucks, an improvement for the consumer because the sleeve is easier to handle than the two cups, and it is equally convenient for everyone involved. They changed the way they did business, and on day one they were saving money.
What they didn’t do was to make it an explicit consumer choice, or put a price (premium) on the alternative. It costs more to double cup so they eliminated the option and committed to the change. The challenge for our Alliance Partner is that they tried to be nice folks and give customers the option. What they should have done is to commit to paperless and move on.
Your business can save money today by adopting digital signature with full enterprise workflow automation. You will increase your margins and permanently reduce your operational costs. Don’t put a premium on the change, just change.