BANGALORE, INDIA: With the growing pressure from society, government and customers for businesses to act in an environmentally responsible way, organizations are trying to adapt to the changing needs. Those who fail to meet these expectations of consumers risk causing damage to their brand. In fact, this can mar an organization's ability to win customers and attract and retain their employees.

The experience of businesses that have already adopted environmentally sustainable working practices indicates that energy efficiency can lead to significant cost savings, which means your business can become leaner and more efficient. Paper, power and travel are the three main areas where organisations can invest their intelligence and gain savings for them and help reduce pressure on the environment. We delve into some tips that can help your organization go green, save and earn brownie points as well.

1. Reduce paper wastage

Organizations can contribute towards a greener environment and save a lot by reducing the amount of paper being consumed. You'd be surprised at the amount of un-collected print-outs lying on the printers and personal prints being taken by employees. A few simple steps toward better printer management can help curtail paper wastage and lead to significant cost savings. Even Gartner says that active management of office printing can lead to reduction of 10% to 30% in recurring spending on document output. It also reduces the annual paper costs by at least 30% by selecting duplex printing as the default setting across the output fleet. As a common practice, most organizations only utilize the single side of paper for printing. Using the reverse side of paper simultaneously is a easy-to-adopt mechanism. It just requires a small tweak in the print preferences dialogue box while printing. In larger printers, you might have to opt for an auto-duplexing unit. Moreover, paper with single side printing that's no longer relevant can be re-used for printing on the other side.
Use Printer Management software: Another way to reduce paper wastage is to use printer management software. There are plenty of them available, and some of them are even available for free. For instance, a software called Print Censor Professional 5.20.174 is one such software that allows easy viewing, controlling and restricting printer usage on a LAN. This can result in getting rid of duplicate, restricted and unauthorized print jobs.For more on this, read this article. http://ld2.in/vv

2. Automate workflow

Besides using duplex printing and printer management software, organizations can also try and avoid printing unless it's absolutely necessary. Try using digital documents as much as possible. Identify what's the bulk of your printing happening for, and see if it can be avoided as much as possible. Process automation is another way to save a considerable amount of paper. In any business process, there are documents that flow across various departments and heirarchies. If these documents can be digitized and automated in a workflow system, then it would not only save time, but also cut down on the printing costs.

3. Use combination fo print and online for surveys, marketing and promotions

The Internet has opened up a whole new channel to reach out to a much larger customer base, and switch from many paper based activities. Online surveys for instance is one such activity. If you're doing an an internal survey of your employees to say, get their feedback on something, they why waste time and money printing out the questionnaire on paper? Setup an online survey tool, like SeaMonkey or LimeSurvey, and send them a web link to the survey questionnaire by email. This makes things faster and also reduces paper wastage. Similarly, if you're doing a market survey that doesn't require face to face interactions, then again online surveys are a great tool to get quick feedback.
Companies could even consider social and other online media to market their products, and reduce the need to print leaflets, brochures, etc. You could use a combination of print and online to promote and advertise your products and services, instead of just using print.