Vol. 7, Issue 2, Part I (2025)

HR and Accounts Payable (AP) are classic paper magnets. New hires, leave changes, KYC, invoices, approvals-each step tends to spawn printouts, reprints, and archival copies. Many companies have started flipping these processes to digital forms, e-signatures, and automated routing inside their ECM/ERP stack. But a practical question remains: does this actually reduce printing and improve process quality, or do we simply shift where the paper happens? 
We studied a 100-employee sample in India to compare a baseline month with a post digitization month. We measured total pages per employee, error rates, and turnaround time (TAT) in HR/AP processes, and we converted page reductions into a transparent CO₂ estimate using a single factor (5.8 g per page, combining paper and energy). We also tracked feature activation-digital forms, e-sign, and automated routing-and computed a simple adoption index to separate high vs. low adopters. 
The pattern is unambiguous. High adopters show a substantial drop in total pages, alongside fewer errors and faster cycles. Low adopters still improve a bit-likely from better defaults and ambient influence-but the transformational gains show up where the bundle is actually used. Translating pages saved into carbon, organizations can report meaningful sustainability gains without complicated modeling. We wrap with a pragmatic rollout playbook that focuses on two things leaders control: make the digital route the path of least resistance and measure three outcomes-pages, errors, days-every month. 
Why HR/AP digitization matters (and not only for IT) 
When leaders talk about “going paperless,” they often picture multifunction devices and network settings. The more decisive lever sits upstream: the business process. HR and AP are perfect candidates because they are repeatable, rules-heavy, and approval-driven-conditions that reward validation, e-sign, and automated routing. 
Three failure loops create the bulk of HR/AP printing
1.    Print-to-correct: paper forms with missing fields or wrong formats create back-and-forth reprints. 
2.    Print-to-sign: wet signatures force hard copies even when the content began life as a PDF. 
3.    Print-to-route: paper folders travel between desks; when files are misplaced, people print again. 
Digitization breaks these loops when it’s done as a bundle (digital forms + e-sign + routing), not as three unrelated tools. This study asks the simple question practitioners care about: when that bundle is switched on and used, how much paper actually disappears, and what else improves?