August 20, 2007
Paperless Office: Where?
Weren’t we supposed to see the paperless office taking hold across the country by now? I remember reading about it years ago. And yet, my office desks is cluttered with paper of every kind. I have paper receipts, paper bills, paper invoices. And of course, there are paper sticky notes.
I guess the paperless office was a myth. Or perhaps its time has not yet come.
3 Comments
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Hi Marisa,
Wow, you should read my ebook, Paperless Office, from Myth to Reality.
Actually, I show people how to go to “less paper” rather than advocating a full paperless environment.
Peter, thank you for the information but it sounded more like an advertisement than a comment. If you’re interested in advertising on my blog, either with a link in the sidebar or a review of your site and ebook, email me and we’ll work out a price. Thanks!
Hi Marisa,
Periodically I check to see where my book might be discussed. I found your blog because you used “Paperless” “office” and “myth” in your comment. Apologize for the apparent advertisement; I was primarily noting your terms nearly matched my book title.
Regarding paper clutter, bills, invoices and the like and paper all over the place.
There have been some great advances in technology today that make paper reduction a reality. However, most computer stores don’t carry good, duplex scanners that enable paper reduction. They are still focused on slow, photo scanners.
Second, disk drives have gone huge and this means that even at 50k bytes per page, it is now possible to easily store big files on disks overcoming previous limitations.
Third, communication speeds are now super fast. So if you need to receive or send pages, it now takes seconds instead of minutes or hours.
And last, you can get cheap or low cost document management software that makes quick work of document filing.
Put those all together and you get a really good chance of cleaning paper off your desk. I think one of the most important thing about doing document imaging is pre defining what your file folders are going to be labeled so that you can scan images from a duplex scanner directly into your files and avoid time consuming document descriptions. Essentially, I’m suggesting you set up a filing system similar to a manila foldering system. Using this approach, you are basically organized around storing like information together and simply paginate through your images until you find the one you need.
Today, people knowledgeable about how to do document management come from “big company” systems, expensive and complicated. There is just too little $$ to help out the everyday, small business or personal record keeper. Which is too bad. Because it really is both economically feasible and easy today.
And the technology is there (cheap duplex scanners), often supplied with free document management software (like last year’s PaperPort). So if you are motivated to reduce your paper clutter, I’d suggest taking a look at low cost scanners from Xerox (Documates) , Fujitsu, Canon, and Kodak and get started. Typically one can get everything they need for effective electronic records management for under $800 (about the cost of a good, 4 drawer lateral file cabinet).
I think the primary reason more people aren’t doing paperless filing today is they don’t really know how inexpensive, easy, and great new duplex scanners have become. When I have visitors and show them how I can scan the contents of a 50 page folder in about 2 minutes (front and back of very page), they are blown away. So shame on Xerox, Canon, Kodak etc. for not really getting the word out. They’ve got great products that really would help people but they are not showing them how. They are just focused on “technology” and not on how to get the whole filing process done.
Pete Harnack