Businesses waste precious time doing paperwork

Businesses all over Europe are wasting almost an entire work day (6.8 hours) a week, doing paperwork. A new Adobe report, entitled Document Drain: How Back-Office Processes are Shredding Productivity, says professionals are wasting precious time filling out forms, printing stuff, or chasing signatures all over the company.

The report is based on a poll of 7,000 professionals from all over Europe. This poor practice is slowing down business growth, hurting productivity and wasting precious resources.

Almost half (48 percent) say they’d lost a contract altogether thanks to poor office tasks management, and a third (33 percent) were forced to cancel a project. The report says that printing and emailing wastes most time (96 percent). Three quarters (75 percent) of employees say printing and emailing is "boring, time-consuming, or challenging".

Searching for lost documents, on-boarding new colleagues and chasing for signatures were all branded as "unnecessarily complex" tasks. Interestingly enough, a lot of this time could be saved by implementing electronic signatures, and it seems many businesses throughout Europe recognize it (48 percent in France, 45 percent in the UK and 44 percent in Germany).

"Today’s findings are a big wake-up call for businesses across Europe. Outdated processes are draining employee productivity and morale -- potentially leading to a loss of revenue and a poor customer experience", says John Travis, vice president of EMEA marketing at Adobe.

"Reimagining administrative processes through apps, digital documents, and other technologies provides the opportunity for companies to transform the experience for employees and customers alike -- and ultimately is an investment in future growth and success".

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