Once the COVID lockdowns were announced, apart from the toilet papers disappearing from Store racks, another curious phenomenon also happened in Australia. Not many might have noticed it unless you were operating a business from home or just forced to work from home. Printers and printer cartridges also rapidly disappeared from the racks of Officeworks, JB-HiFi and similar stores. As the lock down extended, many started to sell their printers for free on Facebook, Gumtree and other platforms because there was no printing ink available within Australia due to border closures. It came as a shock to many that Australia didn’t have the adequate local supply of inks for printers! Couple of years ago, during a lean six sigma workshop on HR processes, a value stream mapping had revealed that one of the biggest wastes in the process was manual printing of documents, obtaining signatures with multiple scans & prints involved and reviewing documents by printing. When we considered the impact of removing the need to print, there was a huge cultural back lash from within the company. It was almost a primal instinct to see everything printed and everyone felt emotionally upset about not being allowed to print! Needless to say, everyone was aware of the impact of printing to the environment and also the cost to company.
We produced various data that showcased the damage that needless printing was doing to the world like the examples below, but everyone just shrugged and said “that is how business is done here and we don’t want to upset the cart!”
So even though one million sheets of paper being annually printed were taking away a large space in their office as tall as 1/3rd the height of Eureka tower, weighing as much as a military grade helicopter in garbage and being responsible for over half an acre of fully grown forest trees being cut annually, there was no business accountability to become more sustainably or efficient or cost effective as a business. What was even more surprising was that the business leaders themselves felt that this was an area they didn’t want tampered with as well because they too loved printing everything from meeting notes, personal memos, emails, contracts and designs! You could call it a Dilbert moment (like the one below), but it was a huge reality for most companies. Some companies introduced a new feature where you could only collect a printout by swiping a card or entering a pin on the printer. This has been shown to drastically reduce printing by as much as 40 to 60% in many companies as they can prevent uncollected print outs and also monitor the departmental cost of printing which can then be adjusted to bottom line cost of that department. Once people realise the cost of their own printing, changes do happen but the big challenge of changing business process to avoid printing was still not on the radar for most companies.
Their motto was “We Print therefore we Exist!”
If you wondered how we got here it could be partially attributed to the smart marketing strategy of printing companies. They very quickly realised that Printing was a primal visual cue for human beings and that we could never move away from seeing something visual on paper. But the printing equipment itself was an expensive investment for most individuals so they made the price of printers almost negligible while they recovered their cost from the expensive Ink cartridge supplies. So a printer based on various features could cost you anywhere from $39 to $350, the cartridges could cost as little as $20 to as much as $1000 depending on the number of cartridges needed, quality and quantity of ink in those cartridges. Printing cost seems quite negligible when the sales guy tells you that it is a few cents per sheet so you almost dismiss it away, but you will be shocked to know that printer ink is one of the world’s most expensive liquids costing more than Human blood, Lifesaving Penicillin, Crude Oil and Drinking water! Might be a good time to write that letter in blood or vodka rather than print it ? ! Consider the heavy price we are going to pay for the waste that is generated by the printing industry. Paper still accounts for 25% of landfill waste and 33% of municipal waste”. Not to mention, when paper is not reused, recycled or disposed of properly then “it rots and produces methane gas which, is 25 times more toxic than CO2” (The World Counts, 2014). Chemical wastes and solvent wastes toxicity levels pose a huge environmental risk that can not only result in global warming but also potentially lead to the poisoning and/or death of nature! If you are interested here is a link that talks about this matter in detail.
Year 2020 COVID lockdown posed a significant challenge to most business leaders and their teams! They still had to keep their business running while most of them were locked up in their homes and the global supply chains that ran the world had come to a grinding halt. As a business if you wanted to sign a document or get a new business contract counter signed by your clients or had to get a staff to sign on marksheets for a student who is dialling in from Mexico for his course or to share designs with your manager for approval; there was no way to do it in the traditional way of taking a print out and handing it over to the stakeholder! Many departmental heads who were resisting the change now had to be thought leaders and showcase to senior management that they could still keep things running. Slowly but surely a shift started to happen. We have been involved in coaching and mentoring some of our clients to make a gradual shift in using the right technology solutions to make a pivotal change in direction.
So how are our clients starting to make a change?
- Attaching a copy of their signature into a digital word document by taking a photo on their mobile phone and pasting the signature image into the document is now their standard solution
- Using Adobe Acrobat reader’s digital signature feature became acceptable for signing an important document!
- Using DocuSign for enabling 3 parties to sign a legal contract became a very big enabler specially the signing parties are not in the same location!
- Some design businesses went further and obtained solutions such as AutoCAD drawing compare to actually find the changes that were done between various designs without using any printouts!
- Companies are starting to introduce digital checklists rather than printed checklists for simple things such as inspections, audits and checklists through online Apps. No more trying to find a printed checklist, making a copy, writing on it, coming back to office to scan it and then typing it into another system anyway. Now they just use the digital checklist and then we integrate their data into pre-existing systems and away they go
- Some don’t even want to send documents to clients anymore. They just show them the data on their own website and client portals! Any verification or signatures needed are just captured on their online applications and emails are sent confirming the transactions
- Even governments and councils are looking at sharing data vial email, online payment gateways and digital signatures which is a fantastic indicator of digital tool adoption to improve customer interaction efficacy
The lockdown has indeed provided that vital pivot that most people needed to find new ways of working because the old business model was finally being revealed as inefficient!
If your business is looking for new ideas to reduce waste, improve operational efficiency and improve your client engagement using technology tools; do reach out to us. Drop us a note or book your complimentary consulting session today. With over 25 years of experience working with large, medium and small companies, we have some unique offering that you might find very useful for achieving your business goals!
Book your complimentary session today or drop us a message!
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