Richmond, RI, goes paperless

The town of Richmond, R.I., recently finalized its strategy to abandon paper and enhance council meetings and other operations. According to The Associated Press, the town council held its first meeting without paper of any kind on Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2013.

In order to implement paperless solutions, town councils have to do more than invest in tablets. Implementing high-quality document management software and paper conversion services is essential, allowing companies to boost the flow of information and ensure they maintain compliance with record storage regulations.

Members of the Richmond town council and administrative staff said that the new paperless solution was helping to reduce costs, make meetings more effective and operations more productive overall, as the town clerk no longer has to spend hours printing, collating and assembling documents for each meeting.

The improvements offered by going paperless have to be supported with adequate document capture solutions, however, or organizations – be they town council or business – will fall short of their goals. Eliminating paper requires adherence to standards of data quality, security, storage regulation and much more. Without the tools to streamline conversion of older records to digital formats, as well as taking future communications and documents paperless from the gate, an office will only be fighting half of the battle.

Richmond, R.I., was able to successfully go paperless, and so too can any other city, town or organization willing to invest the time and resource initially to make the move to digital. Hiring talented concern services will expedite the initial processes and ensure smooth sailing throughout the rest of deployment, helping achieve the many benefits of paperless operations sooner, and move on to the real savings.

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