The fact is you are cutting up, or burning up, or tearing up, or throwing away those rectangular pieces of paper every time you handle or print one of those white sheets of paper. How often do you make a photocopy? Ask the copier company what that costs. How many times have you had to put a customer on hold while you went to find a white sheet of paper? How many of those rectangular pieces of paper does that cost you?

Price Waterhouse Cooper says that it costs an average organization (is your company an average organization?) $20 in labor costs to file a document. How many documents do you have in your company? One hundred? A thousand? Whatever it is, multiply that number by twenty then start a fire with all of the rectangular pieces of paper you’re burning up.  And it gets worse. If one of those documents gets misfiled (and don’t tell us that hasn’t happened) that’s going to cost you $120. If it’s lost altogether it’s going to cost you $220 to replace it. I know what you’re saying. “I’m real careful with my stuff and things don’t get lost in my office.” What happens if the toilet backs up in the office upstairs and floods your office? Or maybe the hairdresser next door left her curling iron going all night and the fire took out all of your paper records. (That really happened!) You had better get those dead presidents ready because you’re going to need a lot of them.

There’s a better way. Electronic document management can save you a lot of grief and a lot of rectangular pieces of paper. Contact us and we’ll help you get over your love affair with your paper.

In the time it took my client to find the phone book his assistant had found the phone number on-line and had dialed the number for him. It was a learning experience for my client because it showed him that with just a little bit of effort he could have discovered that there was an easier and much more efficient way to do things. But my point is that, for the most part, the tools to reduce your office operating costs, improve the office efficiency, and make you own time more productive are already there in your office.

The trend in many offices is to go paperless. But many executives are saying, “I can’t go paperless. It means investing in all this new equipment, and changing the way we do business, and that way works now and has worked for 25 years, and besides, the founder of the company, Old Man Smithereens, well, he really likes his paper.” We’ve all heard it. We may even have said it, in one form or another. And when we were saying those things there was a tiny quiet voice in the back of our heads saying, “You’re throwing your money away and here is a way to keep some of it for yourself, but you just won’t take the time to find out how to do this.” Actually, the voice in the back of my head said, “You’re a idiot!”

Maybe you can’t go completely paperless, but that’s okay. We can do this in little steps and start saving money slowly. You can start slowly, but you do have to start, and you are using the tools to go paperless right now. For example, you customer calls and asks you to send another copy of the proposal. Instead of printing yet another copy and faxing it, print the proposal to pdf (you csan do that directly from your word processor) and ask the customer if you can e-mail it to him. Let him print it if he wants to spend the time and money to do it. You aren’t paperless, but you are using less paper. To say nothing of using less money.

As for Old Man Smithereens, he’s the guy who keeps a rotary telephone on his desk because he just doesn’t like that touch tone contraption. Pick your fights, and that is one you can pass on.

Here is another way to look at it. The next time you go to the office supply store to buy copy paper take a close look at what you are doing. A ream of standard copy paper, nothing special, just a plain package of regular copy paper is about $4.50 or $5.00. A couple of those is about what you spend on lunch. For or five of those reams is the same as lunch with a customer. Where do you think your money is better spent?

Need some ideas to reduce the paper you are using and maybe some other ideas to save money? Just go to www.docxplore.com.

All of those pieces of paper, all of the reports, readouts, printouts, letters, spreadsheets, and all of the other stuff that you use to make parts or run your company is the “data.” Determining what is there, where it is stored, and how important it is, is the “taxonomy” part of this. You call this paperwork, although much of it is not paper, but all of it is important to what you do. We can illustrate this better by taking a look at an (almost) real-world situation.

Wally’s World of Widgets has been supplying the global manufacturing sites of Harry’s House of Holograms for several years. Wally does a pretty good job, but Harry says that he is getting impatient waiting for copies of documents, or information about a an issue related to the widgets. Wally wants to get better control of all the paperwork, and he starts looking at his process. The process goes like this:

A sales proposal is prepared, and this is kept on the computer in the sales guy’s office. And he works from home. A purchase order is sent by the customer and this is printed and stapled to an internal work order. These are kept in a file cabinet in the main office. Purchase orders for the raw materials are kept in the purchasing office. When the raw materials arrive a receiving report is written, as well as a incoming material inspection report. These will be delivered to the main office when the receiving clerk has the time, then filed with the PO when the office manager has the time. Engineering drawings come in from the customer as AutoCAD files. Supporting documents, such as the part description and list of tolerances are sent by e-mail and are in MS Word format. Although they are marked “Confidential” the documents are printed and inserted in a Work In Process folder for the shift supervisor. Some of the manufactured parts are sent to the Quality Assurance office where they will be tested for manufacturing tolerances. The report is kept in a quality folder marked with the customer’s part number in the QA office. There is also a very expensive device that uses ultrasound to check weld integrity. It produces digital images in JPEG format which are kept on the computer hard drive in the QA office. William, a Certified Widget Master, is very protective of his equipment so he keeps the QA office closed and locked when he’s not there. Then there are the shipping documents such as bills-of-lading, and the airbills from the freight forwarder. Those are paper-clipped together and kept in the shipping office. The shipping manager has her own filing method which is a mystery to everyone else.

That’s a pretty long list of documents and it is not complete. That list is a simplified identification of the documents in the operation. Whether you run the Ginormous Manufacturing Company, serving all of the rocky planets, or Wally’s One-Man Show (Two On A Good Day), you have something like this going on. The trick is to know what you have, where it is, and how to get to it. That’s the management part of document management. If this sounds familiar to you, or if some of this “paperwork” could not be found, we can help. Go to www.docxplore.com and ask us to do a document survey. It’s free and it may even help to reduce your operating costs and improve productivity.

Now that we know what we’ve got, we should look at how we can use this information too make management decisions. The next article will discuss what to do with all of this data to keep it safe, yet readily accessible. In the meantime, try to work “data taxonomy” into the conversation at your next cocktail party.

In thinking about those bad things you begin thinking about what to do when they happen and how your business will continue to operate. Here are some things to keep in mind as you lie awake at night thinking, “What if…”

1. Do all of your employees know where the emergency exits are? Do they know what to do if they see something bad is happening? (e.g. some fills the room, water drips from the ceiling, etc.) You might be surprised at what people don’t know.
2. Do NOT worry about the cause of the disaster, but rather think about the impact a disaster, any disaster, will have on your business. For example, what if there is a fire down the street and the street is closed. How will you run your business if you can’t get to it?
3. Can your employees still accomplish some work if they can’t get to the business? Perhaps you can arrange a way for some work to be done away from the work place or at home.
4. Do you have emergency equipment in the business, such as fire extinguishers? Has your staff been trained on how to use that equipment?
5. Make a list of every critical system in the business. That is, what people or pieces of equipment or what data is essential to running the company? Now think about what you would do if any of those critical systems were suddenly removed or you no longer had access to them.
6. Where do you keep financial assets such as banking information or insurance policies? Is there a safer place to put those documents? What other funding or financial resources might be available, if any, in the event of a disaster?
7. What about your information assets, all of the paper kept on desks and in file drawers? That is just as important as the other assets in your business and its loss might mean that you cannot collect on invoices, or pay your employees. Would it be safer if it was digital and stored off-site?
8. Do you have a method of contacting customers to assure them that you and your business are still operating? In other words, plan on making a statement to the media about the situation even if your business was not directly affected.
9. The phone system might go down for any number of reasons. Do you have a method in place for communicating with employees and customers? Almost everyone has a cell phone and this may well be a good time to make a list of those numbers.
10. Has someone been assigned to assist in recovering from the disaster? Who reprograms the phone systems or reboots the servers? Is your IT guy on site or is he a contract employee? Make sure he or she is part of your planning.
11. Get some help in your planning. You insurance agent may be able to bring in an expert to point out risks and how to correct them. The utility companies (water, gas, electric) often have programs in place, or can provide information, on what to do in an emergency. They may even be able to send someone out to assess your business or work place for safety and disaster prevention, as well as offer suggestions on how to cut costs. The fire department is another good source for disaster planning. All of these people and organizations would rather talk to you before the incident then after when the impact is much greater and the costs much higher.
12. If you are not the business owner, then you must get the support of management in your efforts.  That might take some selling on your part, but your preparations and planning may be the things that keep the company running.

There is a wealth of information available on the web for disaster planning and recovery. We would be interested to know if these short considerations have been helpful in your preparations. Contact us at www.docxplore.com.

When we bill a customer we send an electronic invoice via e-mail. Never has a customer said, “I prefer that you send it by a slower, more expensive, method.” When we pay a bill we do it by electronic banking. We have asked our vendors to bill us electronically. None has refused. When we write a letter we will attach it to an e-mail. When the recipient opens the letter it looks just like our regular letterhead, just without the paper. We don’t own a fax machine; there are no manilla folders in the office.

Okay, so maybe we’re sensitive to the this subject because we’re in the business.  But take a look around the world you live in. Medical offices will be required to use electronic medical record systems. Newer practices are often started with the software already in place, so that the only paper in the office is what patients have brought with them. Even that can be easily scanned and made part of the patient’s medical record. Floor space that had been used for those big rolling file cabinets is now used for examining rooms.

Insurance agencies are often required by the insurance companies to use some sort of document management system, or to fax whatever paper they have to a central repository. This isn’t true for all agencies, by any means, just the ones that want to stay profitable.

I could cite many other examples of businesses, or even entire industries, that are striving for the paperless office. Your business can be paperless, too. All of the tools are already in place and on your desk. If you want to send me a message telling me that I’m nuts you will do it in a word processor on your computer. You probably are not using green ledger paper to track your expenses, but rather a spreadsheet application on your computer. And I know you have e-mail.

“Ha!” you say. “I have these really nice proposals that I have to take to my customers. So, I can’t go paperless.” I would suggest that you ask your customer if you can send the proposal via e-mail. Tell him that you are trying to control your costs to keep your prices down. Then say that you will be at his office in an hour to go over the pricing. Chances are that he will thank you because he is trying to go paperless, too.

The only thing standing between you and a paperless office is a commitment. A commitment to save money, a commitment to improve your office efficiency, a commitment to deliver better customer service. When you are ready to make that commitment you will find it quite easy to go paperless. There will be some habits to break, but that is also just a matter of commitment. You may have that fellow in your office who prints everything. You cover for him by saying, “Well, Bill likes his paper.” Somebody will have to talk to Bill and tell him that he is costing the company money, and maybe costing you sales. Does Bill like his paper that much?

The paperless office is not a myth. It can be done, and done successfully. The rest is up to you. If you would like some assistance with the paperless office, or controlling the burden of paper that afflicts many offices, just go to www.docxplore.com and contact us. We’d be happy to talk to you about it.

So take these next few days and get rid of that paper. “But how?” you ask. “This is important stuff!” Really? Then why do you treat this “important stuff” so casually. This is what you will do:

1. Try to figure out what you’ve got in those stacks. That is, just what are all of these pieces of paper? Correspondence? Contracts? Proposals that you’ve been meaning to finish?
2. Think about how these pieces of paper would be filed, if you had actually filed them. What cabinet would you put them in, what would you write on the manila folder? What would you need to know (other than what stack they are in) to find the exact piece of paper?
3. Get a scanner. Not to worry. Many are inexpensive and as easy, or easier to use, than your copier. Ah, yes, the copier. That’s the evil machine that created all of these stacks and cost you so much in copy paper.
4. Get some software to help you file the scanned paper. Now you’re thinking that you have something new to learn. That’s not the problem. The problem is that you have to unlearn the bad habits that got you into this mess. Just like you have to unlearn leaving your dirty coffee cup in the break room.
5. Now go through those stacks of paper and other clutter and file them just like you should have long ago. This time your file cabinet is right there on your desktop staring out from your computer.
6. Now close the office door and start going through those stacks. Chances are much of that paper threatening to crush your desk can be discarded. No, don’t throw it out! Recycle it! The Earth will thank you.
7. Scan the paper into your new software and index it so you can find it again. I can picture it now: you work your way through those stacks saying things like, “Oh, here’s that invoice from the Jones Company. I was wondering what happened to that.” Or maybe something like, “Here’s that information for the Bennett Proposal. Hey, this is a good piece of business.” You may also find the calendar from the Chinese take-out restaurant dated 2006, and the check to the IRS from 2005. No wonder they’ve been calling you.
8. When you are done, open the office door and say to the world, “I’m mean, lean, and open for business.” Or words to that effect.
9. Just keep this up during the year and you will find that you have reduced your office operating costs (you will be shocked to find out how much you have spent on copy paper), and your customers will be so pleased with the better service you are giving them that they will give you added business. This will really happen.
10. What’s that you say? You don’t know how to do these things? Give us a call, or go to www.docxplore.com and we can help. The other New Year’s resolutions, like the one about cutting back on donuts, are entirely up to you.