In the beginning, Tia Alexander managed her real estate agency’s tax records and receipts from a shoe box. Before she knew it, receipts were multiplying and her cardboard catchall was overflowing. Managing her business’ finances was starting to seem like an impossible pipe dream. She could not afford to spend hours sorting through her business receipts, but she needed the information for her expense and tax reports. Tia soon realized she needed a more efficient way to access and organize all of her business information.

Tia’s story illustrates a growing problem for today’s small business owner: information and technology is abundant, but it can easily lead to data overload.

Business trainer, career coach, and Author of “Perform like a Rock Star and Still Have Time for Lunch,” Neat Fleet member Orna Drawas, discussed this very topic with me, explaining:

“Access to information is key for producing results in any company. Information is central to project management, decision-making and strategic analysis. A small company that can easily access important information has a strategic and distinct competitive advantage over any company that does not.”

For years now, people have talked about going completely paperless. The rise of digital business strategies offers a great opportunity for business owners to achieve this vision. The question is: are small businesses implementing the strategies?

This month, Neat surveyed small business owners to determine how they are managing business-related paper documents. What we found was that more than 50 percent of small business owners believe they could better manage business documents.

In fact, small business owners experience dissatisfaction when attempting to file and retrieve paper documents. For example:

• Over 30 percent of respondents said that it takes up to four weeks to get paper-based business documents filed;
• 40 percent estimated spending between 8 to 12 hours per month filing current business documents and business related paper;
• Finally, 33 percent of respondents said it takes up to one hour to find and retrieve a file from paper storage.

Small business owners continue to rely on cumbersome paper filing cabinets for storage of business documents. In addition to slowing office processes, paper systems also cost small businesses in terms of the physical space they occupy.

• 60 percent of those who utilize filing cabinets and/or paper storage said up to 15 percent of their office or work space is currently occupied by filing cabinets;
• 20 percent of those who utilize filing cabinet and/or paper storage said that close to one quarter of their office or work space is currently occupied by general paper storage.

With the variety of affordable, accessible, and easy-to-use digital business strategies available today, it becomes evident that this is one investment businesses can’t afford to pass up.

Until next time … Keep it neat!

-Kevin