Losing or misplacing a document will cost your business more than you might think. In fact, in a survey that Brother International Corporation conducted in 2010, the company discovered this type of disorganization costs up to $177 billion per year. This comes out to about 38 hours, or one workweek, per full-time employee. This and similar studies shed a new light on office productivity and the savings offered by field service management software.

Facts about the Impact of Lost Documents

  • 700 pounds: The average amount of paper products a U.S. consumer uses annually. The country consumes more than 30 percent of the world’s paper despite having less than 5 percent of its population.
  • 10,000: The number of sheets of paper the average employee uses per year.
  • $122: The average cost of finding a lost document, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers. When someone loses a document, consider the steps involved to find or replace it. The first step is searching for it. If an employee loses a document, he spends the time that he would normally be working to find lost paperwork, which leads to productivity and efficiency losses. Since time is money, you’re paying the worker to hunt for the document. If the document is important, it’s likely that more than one employee will join in on the hunt, wasting more time and money.
  • 20 percent: The amount of time employees spend searching for lost documents. For a full-time employee, this is about eight hours a week—a full day of work.
  • 5 percent: The number of documents a company loses each year on average. This means that business lose about 75 documents out of every 1,000.
  • 15 minutes: The average amount of time it takes an employee to file a document.
  • 20 minutes: The amount of time it takes to answer a question when you have to look for the solution on a document. Offices that use software designed for electricians cut this time down to a fraction because the answers are available immediately in a simple-to-use system.
  • $300 and 20 square feet: The cost of a single three-drawer filing cabinet and the amount of floor space it takes up.
  • $25,000: The cost to fill a filing cabinet with up to 9,000 pages. Maintaining the cabinet can cost up to $2,100 annually.
  • 3 percent: The number of misfiled documents.
  • Every 12 seconds: How often a large organization loses a document.
  • 3 months: A document’s average lifespan before it’s outdated.

Benefits of Field Management Service Software

  • Fewer document losses: Field service management software reduces the amount of paperwork that employees handle. These types of programs allow you to scan and save documents to a cloud-based system that workers can access from any mobile device or computer. It also allows you to create documents that employees can fill out and save on the spot.
  • Save time: With all of the traveling that field workers do, there are plenty of opportunities to lose important documents. Rather than complete forms by-hand, they can again use online forms that can be filled out neatly, quickly and with fewer mistakes. When one worker updates a client’s information, others can access the details immediately without needing to look for a physical file.
  • Increased productivity: A quality software program will increase your business’ productivity by up to 26.4 percent and deliver a return of up to $8.71 for every dollar that you spent on it. When workers are more productive, sales cycles shorten, customers receive better service, and lead and conversion rates increase.

It’s amazing how something as simple as a piece of paper can cause so many losses in a business. See the other inefficiencies that offices experience by checking out this infographic. When you invest in your business with 360e’s field management software, you’ll maximize your business’ potential and create room for great growth.