Business and Small Business

Businesses are looking at ways to save money and trim costs. This may be to brace for difficult economic times or to simply streamline operations. One thing many businesses are now doing is reigning in outsourced operations. Many have discovered that outsourcing operations is inefficient, deprives them of control and doesn’t save as much money as initially hoped for. One of these operations heading back in-house is paper shredding.

The trend during the 1990s and into the early 2000s was to pay a third party company to come shred documents (mobile shredding services). The idea was to save money and manpower. Storage bins were placed around the office and paper was deposited. Once a week, a third-party shredding service would empty the bins and take them back to their facilities for shredding. Some shredded the documents on-site, often in a back entrance parking lot. These services were usually contracted for a set period of time.

It has since been discovered, by many businesses, that employee manpower cost was a non-issue as long as paper was shredded on a constant basis rather than all at once at the end of the week. It ends up it doesn’t take any more time to shred a few documents than it does to deposit those same sheets of paper in a storage bin.

Part of this strategy is to place shredders in strategic locations around the office they can be used by a group of 8-12 people. For a business of 60 people, five to sevenshredders can be placed in sales, accounting, purchasing and other departments. Shredder bins are very easy to access and can easily be emptied by custodial staff that already empty the garbage.

Security concerns are another reason to shred paper in-house versus outsourcing to another company. Although rare, there are documented cases of third-party shredding service employees stealing information and material. Many businesses don’t like the idea of temporarily losing control of their information. By shredding paper in-house, only trusted employees have access to the data before being shredded. This helps seal up leaks and ensures better security.

It doesn’t take much time to make up the cost of purchasing the shredders, versus paying a third-party company to shred the same paper. Depending on the size and the cost of the shredder, many businesses can make up the cost of purchasing their own shredder versus hiring a service within a few years.

Paper shredders should be used by all businesses and organizations to destroy receipts, cancelled checks, bills, mail, printouts and other sensitive material. Contact Office Zone for more information on paper shredders.