What is PaperLess and How is it Linked to the Simplification of...

I will start by describing how do we apply Paper-Less in Casa Sauza, and in order to do so, I want to mention that this program is one of the goals established by the General Management: becoming a Socially Responsible Business (SRB). We decided that it could work on our administrative processes, with documents that are needed in case of external audits. With this main goal in mind, we started to move forward by following a learning path about different technologies needed to achieve it.

In the same way, I will explain the processes simplification topic, which relays on reducing or improving administrative processes to elaborate them with the same consistency and service quality, but in less time and with a lower employee's participation. Following this, we know that PaperLess and Processes Simplification, both create a path of success through the automatization of processes, but then...

What can be automatized from a process?

With the PaperLess subject, we eliminate the rigid formats we had and be save paper. We are also able to eliminate unnecessary transfers and delivery times. Let's check out an example: If we take into count that a process of 5 employees releases, and we know that the person in charge of this process has to get the 5 releases signatures, we can calculate that it would take him/her from 40 to 45 minutes to complete the task.

But, if we apply PaperLess to this process, we would eliminate the format that may include 2 more receipts; and by doing so, at the end of the day we would be eliminating 3 sheets of paper per each format. And that means that if we have 100 employees, we would be saving 300 sheets of paper every day this process is required.

In terms of costs, this savings are not really significant and may not be attractive to some people, but if we take into count the environmental care, with PaperLess, the percentage (%) of paper savings counts a lot.

Now, let's talk about the savings we can generate in terms of time, transfers and authorizations. The monetary savings are different depending on the salary of the employee who is performing these activities.

Keeping track of the last example, (the 5 releases format) let's say that they earn $60.00 pesos per hour and the estimated time for the release was from 40 to 45 minutes. Considering that this format is elaborated at least once a week, the annual savings of applying PaperLess and automatizing the process is around $1,560.00 pesos ($75.98 dlls) for each employee. Now, taking the 100 employees from the previous example, the savings would be $156,000.00 pesos ($759.86 dlls) and another benefit is that the productivity would be increased as well because they will have extra 20-25 minutes to continue working and develop other processes.

How have we implemented PaperLess in Casa Sauza?

This has been achieved by finding the new technologies that could help us optimize these formats and processes. We decided to this technology that was already created, which comes in the Office Package and it's called InfoPath.

The InfoPath allows us to generate the formats that we usually work with -in paper- and change them to a digital version, including their authorizations. With this software, we are performing a lot of processes' simplifications in many areas of the company. Nowadays, the training area counts with 7 updated formats that have helped us to decrease the elaboration times on a 42%. That means that the savings are contemplated to be around $220,000.00 pesos, every 10 times we elaborate the format.

The investment was of $0.00 Mexican pesos and the savings of just one employee are of $220,000.00 mxn, including the time that this person can use working on another activity.

As you can see, we are talking about big benefits and advantages of the PaperLess program, totally reflected in numbers and efficiency rates.

I hope this blog post answered your questions. Feel free to contact me in case of any other questions you might have about this matter. If you want to learn more about the modernization of our processes in Casa Sauza, keep reading the next articles:

• TPM Implementation
• Visual Management in Casa Sauza (TPM)
• The Importance of Having Automated Administrative Processes