Going paperless is not a single decision — it's a series of smaller decisions about workflows, tools, and habits. Teams that try to do it all at once usually fail and revert. Teams that work through it methodically usually succeed within a quarter.
This guide walks through eight phases, starting with the easiest wins and ending with full automation.
Phase 1: Audit What Paper You Actually Have
Before buying a single scanner or subscribing to a single tool, spend two weeks cataloguing your paper. Where does paper enter your office? (Post, front desk, internal handoffs?) Where does it live? (Filing cabinets, desks, a server room?) How often is it accessed? Paper that nobody touches for 3+ months is archive — deal with that last.
Phase 2: Stop New Paper at the Source
The most effective paperless strategy is to stop creating new paper before you tackle the backlog. Replace paper forms with digital equivalents (Google Forms, Typeform, or your existing software's forms module). Request suppliers to send invoices electronically. Switch contracts to e-signature (DocuSign, Adobe Sign). This stops the inflow so your digitisation effort actually makes a dent.
Phase 3: Set Up Your Scanning Infrastructure
- For under 200 pages/day: A good ADF (auto-document feeder) scanner like the Fujitsu ScanSnap or Brother ADS series is sufficient. Budget: £300–600.
- For 200–2,000 pages/day: A workgroup scanner with a high-capacity ADF and duplex scanning. Fujitsu fi-7300NX or similar. Budget: £1,500–3,000.
- For 2,000+ pages/day: Production-grade scanner or an outsourced scanning service for the initial backlog digitisation.
- Mobile scanning: For documents received on the go, iOS and Android scanning apps (using the device camera) now achieve 200+ DPI — sufficient for Inkscribe AI's Standard OCR mode.
Phase 4: Process With OCR Immediately
Scanning creates image files — they're searchable only by filename. OCR makes them searchable by content. The golden rule: never save a scanned document without running OCR first. With Inkscribe AI, this can be automated via the API — your scanner saves to a watched folder, the API processes each new file, and the searchable text is returned and stored.
Automation Example
Set up a folder on your server called /inbox/scanned. Point your scanner to save there. Use Inkscribe AI's API webhook to process every new file automatically. The processed, searchable PDF lands in /processed/ within 10 seconds.
Phase 5: Build Your Digital Filing System
A digital filing system only works if everyone uses the same conventions. Define them before you start importing documents: folder structure, file naming conventions (YYYY-MM-DD_DocumentType_Entity.pdf is a robust default), and metadata tags for your document management system.
Phase 6: Handle the Backlog
The backlog is where most paperless projects stall. The most practical approach: categorise documents into three buckets — active (accessed at least once in the past year), archive (older, rarely accessed), and can-shred (retention period has passed). Digitise active documents first. Archive documents can be batch-scanned by a service bureau more cheaply. Can-shred documents should be cross-shredded immediately.
Phase 7: Automate Document-Based Workflows
Once documents are digital and searchable, you can automate workflows that previously required manual handling. Examples: incoming invoices OCR'd and routed to the finance system automatically. HR documents (offer letters, signed contracts) added to employee records without manual upload. Customer correspondence categorised by topic and assigned to the right team.
Phase 8: Measure and Iterate
- Time to retrieve any document (target: under 30 seconds)
- Paper spend month-over-month (printing, storage, courier)
- Document processing backlog (should approach zero over 8–12 weeks)
- OCR accuracy rate for your document types (Inkscribe AI's analytics dashboard shows this per document category)
Teams that go paperless typically report 40–60% reduction in time spent searching for documents and a measurable reduction in administrative errors from illegible handwriting or misfiled paper.