Paperless office best practices9/14/2023 ![]() ![]() Why are 5 different people writing the same policies, why can we not share our work and avoid duplication of effort?.Why do we have so much paper and so many filing cabinets, what do we have to do to move into the 21st century?.Why is every single version of this contract different, what is the most recent version and who was working on it last?.Why is it that I can find anything on Google but I can not find the proposal I wrote last month?.These prospects come to us articulating the problem: The end result is a trickle of customers who actually go ahead and implement a system (FileHold or others). In the last two years we have had near 70,000 visits to our web site resulting in many sales proposals and uncountable meetings with prospects. Type the words "Document Software" into a search engine and FileHold pops up. Be able to find information when they want it:.Protect their Intellectual Property by organizing and securing it:. ![]() Reduce office rent which can be done by getting rid of file cabinets:.Save resources which means reducing our consumption of paper:.Who would not want to reduce the mountains of paper they have and give their employees easy access to their electronic documents? Satisfied customers are reducing their paper usage and taking advantage of the FileHold version control, secure user rights, search, workflow, and are doing it from anywhere they can access the internet. This seemed like a good idea and so we started.Īfter approximately 25 man years of software design, development and testing FileHold Document Management Software (DMS) was born. Four years ago I was presented with the business proposition to: "Build an affordable, easy to use software product that would help companies get rid of paper and organize their electronic Intellectual Property so they could find and work with it". Now I am on the other side of the fence and trying to sell the idea and technology of the "paperless office". That was the norm for business then and in many cases is still the norm today. I am sure I contributed to creating many filing cabinets full of redundant copies of information. My sales objective was to add a copier in every department and on every floor of business and government buildings so that users could copy cartoons, recipes and hockey schedules not to mention agendas and multi page handouts for everyone at the social club meeting! I was very successful. I actually had customers who purchased paper not by the case, pallet or truckload but actually by the trainload. "Why have just one copy of an invoice when you could copy it in 4 different colours and have it filed in every department". As an account manager for Xerox I used to encourage customers to make multiple copies of everything. IntroductionĪ good part of my work life was spent encouraging companies to increase paper usage – the more the better (for me). The following explains why that happens and how the paralyses can be overcome. "Paperless office" represents the ability to improve business efficiency by creating functioning, sharable, secure libraries of electronic information.Ĭompanies and Governments have good intentions to "go paperless" but when they try "decision paralyses" sets in and the project too often ends up on the back burner. What can be achieved is a significant reduction in the volume of paper through the elimination of: redundant forms, draft documents and duplicates of the same content. Nobody expects the paperless office to be paper free! The form, transportability, friendliness and legal certifications provided by paper cannot be completely replaced by electronic media. It seemed to me that this well intended project was not setting the right example. They could have set the tone for this initiative by having the proposal provided in electronic form for review and action by their selection committee (simple e-mail processes could have done this). It made me think about their commitment to reduce paper. The prospect required the proposal be printed and bound (5 copies of a 60 page document) that filled a medium sized box with paper. The prospective customer wanted to reduce paper consumption by installing a document scanning system and create a secure electronic document library. The idea for this article came to me as I was delivering a sales proposal. Why your company may struggle to reduce paper and cut costs ![]()
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