Moving Toward A Paperless Office

Where Do You Start?

So you want to go paperless? Not sure where to start? The answer is literally right under your nose. If you have plans to eliminate or reduce your business's paper consumption and records storage, the best place to start looking is on your desk. The typical desk is loaded with paper - mail, file folders, notebooks - you name it. Chances are the paper that is filling your file cabinet, the file room or the third floor - whatever the case may be - passed over your desk or the desks of your colleagues.

Start with the "live" paper in your office. Try not to think about how you are filing your records now. Traditional, paper-bound records management options are very limited by nature. Therefore, modeling after the "old way" is only going to prevent you from realizing all the benefits of a paperless office. Instead, start fresh - take a look at how some documents are generated by your business and how others are delivered. Then, consider how the documents could be generated or delivered.

Look at the Process, not the Result

You might find that many documents generated by your business never need to be produced in ink. For example, most businesses require hourly employees to submit a timesheet on a regular basis. The timesheet form is often printed, filled in by hand, submitted to a supervisor that endorses it, and eventually it makes its way into a manila folder. Most paper-based documents follow a similar path.

In a paperless office, the same documents could be exchanged and approved via email and then stored in an electronic archiving system. Most of the time and cost savings would be lost if the document followed the traditional path and was then digitized.

Saving space in the file room is nice, but set your expectations higher in planning for a paperless office. There are many solutions available, and some offer a lot of value beyond a file cabinet replacement.

Seek Cooperation

Seek the cooperation of your customers and vendors in going paperless too. Many companies can invoice you electronically, either by web, email or fax. You will find that many of your customers will appreciate it if you can provide them with the same types of options, eliminating physical documents from your invoicing process altogether.

Dealing with Paper in Your "Paperless Office"

Although seeking to become a paperless office is very fiscally worthwhile, for most businesses, becoming truly paperless is not possible. Some documents get delivered by letter carrier, and while some third parties will support your pursuit for a paperless office, others won't or can't. Even though your business still needs to deal with these paper documents, you don't need to let them pile up.

Document imaging or scanning allows you to deal with paper without letting it accumulate. To maximize the accessibility benefit of your electronic document management solution, establish processes to get your documents into an electronic format as soon as possible. Eliminate the physical copy of the document as soon as feasible to prevent clutter and confusion. To preserve privacy, the best practice is to destroy the documents with a quality document shredder. (Caution, please make sure your documents are properly imaged and backed up before you take that final step.)

Archiving

After giving the above some thought, you should be able to figure out how to keep most of your documents from making it to print. In doing so, you may have considered the following questions relating to the different types of documents you encountered;

• Where does the document come from?
• What format is it in?
• How does it relate to other documents?
• How is it used?
• Who needs to see it?

The answers to these questions should give you an idea about how your documents need to be archived, or filed away, and the basic capabilities of the archiving solution you will require.

Where does the document come from? What format is it in? - At some level, the archiving solution you select must be compatible with the systems that source your documents. If the documents are in an unusual or proprietary format, your archiving solution must be able to convert them into a format it can later display to you.

How does it relate to other documents? - Like documents in a folder, drawer or cabinet relate to one another in some way, so will their electronic counterparts. Much more sophisticated relationships can be established in an electronic system when compared to a physical file cabinet. These relationships are important, because they make it possible to easily locate the documents.

How is it used? Who needs to see it? - Why a document is retrieved from an archive or who will be looking for the document influence how the document will be searched for. For example, an accountant might look for a document relating to a particular invoice number, while a customer service person might look for that same document based on a customer's account number. The archiving system you choose should provide a means of finding documents that is natural for all of your users.

There are many other considerations that are beyond the scope of this article; capacity, security and portability to name a few. Contact an information system consultant to ensure you get a system that is right for your business.

Document Imaging

As mentioned above, it is very difficult to keep all of the paper out of your office, but you don't have to let it pile up either. Document imagining, or scanning, lets you convert any physical documents into a digital format. If you want to convert any existing files over to an electronic format, a document imaging solution is probably requisite.

Document imaging solutions consist of a hardware and software set, a scanner and supporting software. These two components may be sold together or individually, depending on the solution provider. As a rule of thumb, look for major brand names on the hardware side and look for conformance to industry standards, such as ISIS or Twain, for the software, as this will ensure reliability and improve your chances of receiving support and updates.

The document imaging solution you consider can cost from $100s to $100,000s. The major factors that affect cost are image quality, speed of the scanner and the volume capacity of the scanner. Speed and volume capacity sound deceptively similar, but are in fact not the same; a $200 scanner and a $20,000 scanner may both scan 60 pages per minute, but the $20,000 scanner may be rated to run 24 hours a day for a month, whereas the $200 scanner would burn out after a few hours of continuous operation.

In selecting a document imaging solution, consult an expert and make sure the specifications match your business's needs.

Complete Document Management Solutions

True "Document Management Solutions" provide the features of both archiving and imaging systems, and perhaps some additional features such as report generation, automated document distribution, auditing and workflow to name a few.

If your business demands any considerable volume of imaging, then you should consider a true document management solution vs. separate archiving and imaging solutions. The closer integration between the archive and the document imaging should make it much easier to get physical documents into the archive; because you are using one computer program, there should be fewer steps to imaging and archiving a document.

Likewise, if your business needs special feature or may need them in the future, a document management solution is the way to go. Automated distribution or workflow products from third parties are not going to work as well as an all encompassing solution from a single provider or cooperative team. Bottom line, if your business needs to do anything beyond simple storage and retrieval of electronic documents, they need a complete document management solution.

What about Existing Archives?

Don't even consider trying to image your historic documents before you have considered all of the preceding and have decided on a solution or solutions that will work for your business. Treat the conversion as a separate project, and don't start this project until your business is up and running on the new solution. Why? If you have a false start with a paperless office solution, any time you spend imaging historic documents may be wasted.

Once your new solution is working for you, you may want to image your physical records and get them out of your way. But before you do, stop and think about why and what value it will bring back to your business. You might have old records you will never need to access and you can legally destroy - destroy them! You may also have records you will never need to access, but you legally need to retain them; unless you're really hurting for space, don't waste your time imaging these, just hide them in a safe place, out of the way. The only historic documents you should bother imaging are ones that your staff is going to need to regularly access.

Generally, the more recent a document is the more significant or the better the chances are you will need to access it. This is why traditional files are often organized by date, with the newest files in the front. Therefore, it makes sense to start your scanning project with the most recent documents in your archive, and work backwards.

Like any project, define a schedule and set specific objectives. Count on having someone spend plenty of time at the scanner. If you make some progress everyday on the historic documents and always-always keep up with the current documents, you will eventually complete your imaging project.

Finding a Solution

After defining your system requirements, perhaps with the help of your information systems consultant, seek well established and well supported solutions that match those requirements. There are many vendors offering "Paperless Office Solutions" and "Document Management Systems" on the web. Ask people in your industry who they have had luck with, and who to steer clear of. You will find you have many options. Once you have narrowed your search down to a few vendors, ask them each for a demonstration - if they have something worthwhile to offer, they will be happy to show you and, after considering all of the above, you should be able to tell which solutions will fit your business best.

About the Author: Adam T. Anthony, an expert in records management and information systems, leads the product deployment team at the MultiProcess Computer Corporation in Windham, NH. MPCC has provided document imaging and archiving solutions to businesses across industries for over nineteen years.

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