Often times, when we’re mired in how things have always been done, it’s hard to stop to consider that perhaps there is a better way forward. Organizations hesitant to change may not see the value in the disruption that change brings. But if there’s anything that the Internet, Netflix, and Amazon have taught us is that change can be good. We just need to learn to embrace it.

One example is paperless board meeting software. It is designed to improve the operational process of board meetings with minimal disruption to the organization. In fact, there are more pros than cons to having an online service that helps the staff and members of the board work more efficiently and effectively.

Here are the top five reasons why you should consider going paperless for your board meetings.

1. Save time

Board packets take days, sometimes even weeks, to assemble. Having all the right documents prepared for a board meeting involves creating reminders to contributors to submit their documents for review, scanning and/or printing of documents, not to mention collating and assembling them into board packets and ensuring that all stakeholders receive their packets on time. This could mean mailing, which incurs postage fees, or hand-delivering the documents, which adds more labor costs.

Last minute additions—and those are not uncommon—and errors mean more time is needed to reassemble and repaginate the documents.

Chances are, the person who prepares the board packets also has to juggle myriad other tasks, so why not reduce the labor for board packets with a paperless meeting solution to facilitate efficiency and increase productivity?

2. Reduce costs

Not only is the preparation of board packets labor intensive, the materials needed to build board packets can quickly add up. When you choose a board packet preparation software, you can reduce the cost of labor and even eliminate the cost of paper, binders, mailers, printing, and postage. For example, when an Oregon school district started to use BoardBook, they were able to save over $20,000 annually in labor and supplies for their school board meetings.

It’s worth noting that while some programs do away with printing altogether, others like BoardBook provide the option to print for organizations with legal requirement to retain copies for archives or wish to provide copies for the public to review, and for board members not quite ready to make the switch.

3. Improve collaboration

Board meetings often involve reviewing information that’s obtained from several sources, and it often falls on someone in the role of the compiler to collect the documents from different people. When the preparation process is online, the compiler can assign deadlines to individual contributors, who can log in and submit directly to the workflow, which is a more seamless way to track submissions and work together towards a complete packet.

4. Locate information easily

When information is tucked within pages and pages of documents inside storage boxes, it could be difficult to find specific details you need from previous meetings. While a paperless board meeting software may not be the official archive of record, it can hold the historical record of meetings, and with a powerful search function, such as the one in the BoardBook web portal, you could locate information from thousands of documents in a matter of seconds!

5. Save trees

If your organization has an initiative to lessen the impact it has on damaging the environment, then going paperless for board packets is certainly worth considering. If you’re not ready to go paperless completely, you can still save paper when the contributors submit their documents electronically and everyone reviews the packets online. Last-minute edits and submissions that change pagination won’t require a reprint that can get up to thousands of pages. Just print right before the board meeting for those who prefer to have a hard copy—that alone could save many trees in the process.