Supporting the supply chain & the planet: cutting paper consumption

As outlined in a report by Forrester, 58% of European consumers prefer to purchase more environmentally friendly products.* Therefore, striving for zero carbon business must be a priority as part of any Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategy. This relates to all aspects of an organisation’s operations; from internal processes, such as production, to external processes, such as those in the supply chain.

Whilst the need for change is accepted, many organisations’ challenge is how to implement environmentally friendly business processes in a timely and cost-effective way. However, contrary to popular belief, there are actually significant commercial benefits to having a green supply chain. Switching from manual processes, for example, is not only more efficient but can also lead to an increased market share. This is because organisations that address their business carbon footprint have greater sustainability credentials to market to potential customers.

This blog, which also forms one chapter of our report; 3 steps to a shorter, greener supply chain, explains how eliminating paper consumption across the supply chain is essential for increased productivity and profitability.

As summarised above, one area that businesses can focus on for greater sustainability credentials is digitising the supply chain.

Paper processing is both costly and time-consuming for any business. Office paper consumption statistics provided in recent research by Adobe, which surveyed over 1500 employees in large organisations, showed that on average each employee prints approximately 450 pages per week.** Overall, this paper and print consumption equates to:

Figure 1. Average annual printed paper consumption per employee

(based on an average cost for a box of paper – 10 reams, of £40)

When these calculations are scaled up across the whole organisation, or even just across an entire team, the cost implications just for paper consumption are clear. This is not even considering the associated costs of ink and the running costs of printing hardware. Gartner estimates that overall printing costs businesses between 1-3% of their annual revenue.***

There are also the overhead costs to process all these paper documents. In fact, Adobe also found that employees are wasting more than 28 days per year on low-value tasks such as printing, stapling, signing and scanning documents.

In addition to the costs of printing physical paper documents, other costs are associated with a supply chain that runs on outdated processes. As our Customer Service Director explains:

The workflow described above is a stripped-back version of common manual supply chain processes and is only reflective of everything running smoothly. When factoring in document mis-keys, communication errors, or other delays, this becomes far more inefficient in cost, consumption and emissions.

Particularly when considering the peripheral ‘costs’ (environmental and financial) for suppliers taking this order management approach, summarised below:

Physical servers that have the capacity to store the required information even at peak periods

On-premise teams

In contrast, businesses that take a digital transformation approach make significant savings in paper consumption, other raw materials and the associated costs. Additionally, enabling EDI and other business automation technologies to manage a supply chain network provides flexibility, scalability and reduces the error rate.

So for organisations wanting to take steps to automate a manual process, where do they start? Well, this can be achieved by onboarding a supply chain technology provider that can facilitate the automated exchange of vital order documentation between trading parties. We recommend scoping out providers that have sustainability credentials to further support your green business objectives.

For example, Transalis works with its technology partners to:

All of the above contributes to happier consumers, who seek environmentally friendly products. It also contributes to greater business efficiency. This is due to the elimination of manual processes, resulting in increased accuracy and immediacy of data communication.

As outlined above, addressing paper consumption with digital transformation is increasingly common, especially for an organisation committed to becoming a zero carbon company. Transalis has first-hand experience in supporting our clients with these objectives.

We have some key examples of companies reducing carbon footprint, as detailed in our published client case studies. For two clients in particular, (one being Smeg and the other an office supplies business) Transalis automation solutions helped to significantly cut paper consumption.

With this paper-to-digital approach, paper consumption is significantly diminished, errors are eradicated, overheads are reduced, and emissions are cut. Here’s how:

Subject to some controls and forward planning, with EDI in place, a huge number of people are removed from low-value processing in the supply chain. Not only that, but this approach further supports work-from-home or multi-location teams that can access all of this information via the organisation’s internal systems remotely. Overall, this automated workflow significantly cuts business spend and is incredibly important for companies that are reducing their carbon footprint.

As a SaaS business, Transalis takes its environmental responsibilities very seriously. We can help support your organisation meet its CSR and consumer demands. We work with our technology partners to optimise the energy efficiency of our infrastructure, maximise the use of renewable energy and minimise the need for physical hardware through server virtualisation.