author(s)
Sarita Aurangabadkar and Amol Marathe

abstract

This study examines whether scan-to-cloud and e-signatures meaningfully reduce office printing in Indian enterprises. Using employee-level panel data (N=100) from Mumbai, Pune, and Nashik, we compare baseline and post-deployment monthly pages, and estimate the role of adoption intensity (High vs. Low). We also benchmark waste pages and translate page reductions into a carbon proxy (grams CO?e per page held constant across periods for transparency). Results indicate that highadoption employees reduce printing by around a third on average, while low-adoption employees show modest declines. Regression models controlling for baseline volume, enablement (scan/e-sign access), training, and city suggest that adoption intensity and tool enablement are significant predictors of reduced post-deployment pages. We discuss practical levers like training, default settings, and enablement coverage that convert digitization features into measurable sustainability gains.

Most organizations buy licenses for scan-to-cloud and e-signature, but paper use doesn’t fall unless people actually adopt the new way of working. This paper asks a simple question with big operational consequences: when scan-to-cloud and e-sign are enabled and lightly trained, do employees really print less? We ran a pilot with 100 employees across Mumbai, Pune, and Nashik, comparing each person’s monthly pages before/after activation and segmenting by adoption level. Results show a material reduction in printing, concentrated among high adopters. On average, the overall sample’s monthly printing fell by around 31%, abandoned/waste pages dropped by around 48%, and the month’s CO?e savings (using a transparent 5.8 g/page factor) totalled 108.6 kg. Regression analysis controlling for baseline volume and city indicates that being a high adopter (? = ?134.66, p<0.001), scan-to-cloud enabled (? = ?38.83, p<0.001), e-sign enabled (? = ?21.02, p<0.001), and training completed (? = ?12.38, p = 0.035) are all associated with lower post-period printing (R² ? 0.97). We conclude that the technology works when adoption is real and outline a pragmatic playbook for scaling impact.