The holiday season is here and with it begins the cheerful trickling in of holiday cards. You might already have a pile forming on your entryway table.

 They’re a little like presents, you might say. Open them and inside is a photo of family and friends, or friends’ kids (my how they’ve grown!), who you haven’t seen in the longest of times. Or at the very least there’s a warm greeting with an update on “things.”

Yes, good old-fashioned paper holiday cards are perfect. But have you ever considered sending them online instead? You might have, but you didn’t ever actually do it because of a plethora of challenges we can all relate to:

 -Digital is impersonal, even if you slug in their names and your signature in a script-like font,
-People generally love the traditional acts of opening the mailbox, finding a card, and tearing open the envelope
-You can display paper cards as part of your holiday décor and look at them all season long
-None of your great aunts or grandmas have computers, and they keep great records of who they do and don’t get cards from

So maybe it’s easier to just send paper cards. Fair enough. 

Now (seemingly unrelated, but you’ll see how they are shortly), when you think of your approval process at work, you think of paper too, right? Have you ever considered moving it all online instead? You might have, but you didn’t ever actually do it because of a plethora of challenges we can all relate to:

-Digital, you are told, is impersonal because hand writing comments in red ink makes people feel like everyone’s actually “touched” the project (kumbaya)
-People generally feel safe with the traditional act of moving stacks of paper from desk to desk (what if there’s a computer glitch?!)
-You can’t get anyone to understand that all season long, you’re spending more on reams of paper than you would on this one solution
-None of the higher-ups do well with change, and this would jingle bell rock their worlds in a very bad way (and don’t think they’re not keeping record of that for review time)

So maybe it’s easier to just leave things the way they are. Sure is. But then it’ll be another year of miscommunications, blown budgets and deadlines…and we both know that’s not really what you want.

TO SAY a digital proofing and approval process is more streamlined, efficient and eliminates multiple rounds of back and forth IS EASY. To get everyone on board with this change takes more than a little holiday magic.

Look. You’ve done your research. You know there are better options out there. With the New Year swiftly approaching, now is the time to make the switch. Start clean and fresh…and paper free!

To make everyone happy, you can even send a paper card to make the announcement.

MAKE A RESOLUTION TO DITCH YOUR PAPER APPROVAL PROCESS!