The Step by Step Guide to Becoming the Perfect Paperless Office
Now, you’ve vaguely played with the idea of switching to a digital document management system; the thought of that huge amount of extra space, being able to bring back a document in an instant and more than one staff member at a time being able to work with the same document without endless photocopies being made (which is both needless for your company’s pocket and not exactly environmentally friendly).
Use the information here to learn what is involved and how you can plan for one of the most beneficial revamps you can make to your business this year. Everything else around us is digital for a reason: it’s quick, it’s easy and it allows you to share information to the other side of the globe in an instant.
Catch up with the times and reap the full benefits of becoming a paperless office. Here's how to begin:
1. Calculate how much paper you have
This is the most obvious consideration, and you must have already thought about this (as the excessive amount of paperwork you currently have in storage is prompting you to look into doing something about it), but we’ll talk from experience here.
You need to think about the volume of documents currently in storage and the rate at which new documents enter your current paper-based system. A large backlog would take quite a while to clear if you took on an in-house scanning project, so it’s well recommended to outsource this initial accumulation to a scanning bureau.
If your average weekly document input is sparse it would be worth investing in a document scanner. When most people think of a ‘document scanner’ they bring up an image of the lid you open on top of your desktop printer, where a single piece of paper is placed onto the glass. Luckily, document scanners can automatically feed huge batches of paper and scan at speeds of up to 200 pages per minute. Most work places just need a small workgroup scanner to clear general day-to-day accounts payable documents.
For the larger in-house backlog-clearing projects you will need to consider the costs of employing temporary staff for the preparation of the paperwork and others to operate the document scanner(s). If the sheer volume of inbound documents is likely to be too much to cope with for a relatively small in-house project, digital mailbox solutions or sending documents to a scanning bureau on a monthly basis are very useful alternatives.
2. Standard documents or special requirements?
Most companies only need to use the conventional A4 document, but a variety of other sizes are often used by specialist businesses (from receipts and delivery notes, right up to A0 plans).
Most scanning bureaus have the capability to scan almost anything; at one end of the spectrum, we’ve scanned half-frame 35mm negatives, and at the other end, we’ve scanned wardrobe doors to enable the client to show off the quality of their products online.
A0 plans take a lot longer to scan, and are priced with this in mind, yet A3 documents can still be automatically fed at fast speeds.
3. How much preparation is needed?
Before your paperwork is scanned it must be checked for staples, paperclips, sticky notes, curled pages, problematic paper sizes and anything else that may slow down the scanning process.
Staples are the main culprit, with the potential to damage scanning equipment should one creep through. Although many modern scanners have staple detection, stopping the document before any harm is done, it still adds downtime to the project – which is why much care needs to be taken during preparation. If you plan to scan your documents yourself this is an important part of the preparation process. If you are looking to outsource the scanning you will need to give the scanning bureau an indiction of what the average document is like.
Get a feel for the density of staples and other inhibitors and make a note of this as part of your plan.
4. What would you like back?
The standard digital document format is PDF. Used by default in the majority of systems, PDF documents are compressed to a small and easy to deal with file size to allow for multiple pages within a single file. When you have hundreds of thousands of digital documents, keeping the file size down to a minimum is key to running a fast and efficient system.
If best possible quality is your concern, if plans or fine art media need to be scanned, TIFF would be the file format for you. TIFF offers lossless image data, but can take up quite a substantial amount of space per file – so best in small quantities!
You also need to consider whether you will need black and white or colour scans. Black and white scanning is usually sufficient for most, as the majority of documents are just black and white. It may, though, be imperative that you keep the document as it is (plans with colour coding, for example).
5. How would you like to retrieve the documents?
The indexing of the digital documents is the most important step towards creating a document management system. How do you normally index your documents? Files can be indexed in reference to client names or invoice numbers, for example.
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) can make the output PDF searchable, allowing you to search for any word or phrase within that document. Document management software can then bring back any document with the searched term in it.
Business Processing and Outsourcing (BPO) can also save you a lot of time. It can take care of labour-intensive and time-consuming data processing work, web research, invoice processing and much more. For example, we can scan bank statements and extract each line into an Excel spreadsheet, create a list of Dentists in London for your sales team or convert physical documents to Word format.
Alternatively, intelligent recognition software can fully automate the identification and indexing of your documents.
6. Document management software
Now, your digital files have been created and are ready to be integrated into a shiny new document management system. Is your current IT infrastructure compatible with the requirements of the software you have been recommended? Do you have plenty of space, ready to store and backup the files? These are vital questions you need to address well in advance, allowing you to prepare for the digital demands of the technology.
Most document management software solutions on offer work on a role/permissions basis, meaning that user accounts are created with rules as to what they can see, retrieve, and edit. This makes it much easier to make certain documents restricted and logs of changes are kept, meaning you upkeep a very high level of security. The licenses are normally limited by the number of users who will be using the system at the same time, which is why you need to consider how many people normally need access to documents at the same time and whether that would dramatically increase if you introduced a digital document management system.
Ask for trials and demos of the systems you are interested in, run it past your IT department and – most importantly - the end users. They are the ones who will be using it on a day-to-day basis. Make sure they can easily use it and take on-board any training needed. If they can't get used to it, don't force it upon them, find out why and try another system.
7. What to do with all the leftover originals?
Most of our clients want to totally eradicate paper documents from their offices, and the originals are securely shredded and recycled – leaving a certificate of destruction, for compliance purposes. This is surely the most attractive option, working towards a much more efficient and productive paperless office (plus, doing your bit for the environment).
Some companies may be operating under strict guidelines of a society or group and may need to keep the originals for retention purposes. Be sure to check the legalities regarding your practice.
8. Keeping less-paper
Once you have tackled the paper mountain you will need to utilise your new system to prevent a backlog from ever building again. Place a scanner or two in your offices and scan paperwork as soon as it enters your premises. No more messy desks, access documents from anywhere, improve productivity with immediate effect.
This is finally the paperless office, more than 30 years in the making:
The Rules of Marketing Have Changed
2012 is definitely going to be a year of seismic change for us. Our complete reversal of thinking was been triggered by Martin finding and recommending Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah's Inbound Marketing self-help book. The quiet period between Christmas and New Year gave us time to sit down and rethink our strategy based on the insights introduced to us.
Having been an avid contributor to the blogosphere for quite a while, from Facebook to Twitter and from Flickr to my own photography website, many of the tactics were no real surprise but act as a good confirmation that I was shooting in the right direction. The real eye-openers were the statistics and dramatic changes in internet users' behaviour, prompting the turnaround many companies have not yet attempted: moving from focusing on outbound marketing to inbound marketing.
What is inbound marketing?
Simply put: Getting found by potential customers rather than actively attempting to interrupt their daily activities.
... and why the sudden change?
Because people have much, much more control over what they see or hear and can easily block it out:
- Spam filters take out unwanted emails (research from MarketingSherpa suggests that email open rates have fallen from around 40% in 2004 to just under 20% nowadays!)
- Most people research from trustworthy sources before making a decision (TripAdvisor, Reevoo, forums, and many other review-based communities)
- Caller ID and 'do not call' registries cut down on cold calling
- Daily post is now just a mix of junk advertising and bills, so you can no longer look forward to opening the post in the morning (yet tearing it up is quite satisfying!)
- TV watchers can fast-forward through adverts on recorded programmes
- Advert-heavy trade magazines are losing subscriptions to blogs (which are searchable, influenced by positive social response and mostly advert-free)
- Workplaces are listening to Sonos systems or their iPods instead of radio, also blocking out a whole wave of advertising
It has become so much quicker, easier and cheaper to find what you want online without distraction or interruption. A lot of businesses have realised this and have stopped going to less effective trade shows (for example) and are simply sitting at their desk and searching Google, saving travel and accommodation costs whilst being much more effective.
Us marketing folk have to now change our attitude towards the type of marketing strategy used. We've gone from preaching 80% outbound (overtly disruptive) and 20% inbound marketing to switching it right around. 80% inbound and 20% outbound is now the right mix. Now, the challenge is getting your colleagues to agree and really step up to the challenge. Use the information here to "wow" and persuade them, and you can't go much wrong.
P'd off!
The four Ps we have learned to trust: Product, Price, Place, Promotion are no longer relevant online and their absence has made for a much larger, open playing field.
Time to think V.E.P.A: Valuable, Easy to use, Prominent, Action orientated. Your web content has to really grab the user's attention by being useful to them and by having a point. People aren't going to waste time on content from which they will not gain anything, so you will need to give something useful away first to gain the trust and interest of a potential customer. The easiest and most helpful thing to give away is knowledge. It doesn't cost you anything and you then have a platform from which you can prove that you know what you are talking about.
The most effective platform to project your wisdom from is a blog. It's all about setting up an interesting, valuable, unique content-making factory. Keyword cramming is no longer effective, as with many old 'black hat' techniques which are slowly being fended off as the Google algorithm evolves. Google's aim is to give searchers the best quality content based on search terms used and they are getting better at providing that by the day, so it's about being on the ball. If you are consistently creating genuinely good content you really cannot go wrong.
All tooled up
You have so many social media tools at your disposal you probably don't know what to do with them!
Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, to name a few. If you haven't already, create a profile for your business straight away. This is a huge subject to cover, but in short my advice is:
- Tweet interesting blog posts and mention relevant Twitter users – you will eventually get a retweet, and exposure brings along a following
- Be active and respond quickly
- Utilise LinkedIn Groups and Answers to demonstrate helpfulness in your market area
- Keep a uniform branding across all profiles, in your colouring and display pictures
- Start making engaging videos and put them on your YouTube Channel (just you talking about a subject will be powerful)
Monitor to excess
Most importantly, make sure you are keeping a watchful eye over your progress. You need to know what is working and what is not. Use Google Analytics EVERYWHERE and, yes, I'm being literal. We have 9 different website profiles on Google Analytics, with more data being produced than you can shake a stick at. This is where you need to be. Use a website grader to see a whole range of helpful statistics, with warnings and suggestions to help you improve your website.
Trial and error is the game, and you will need to play around with content to see which bits work better than others.
Here's the line to repeat to your manager: Inbound marketing is an investment rather than an ongoing expense. Gain their support and then start your interesting journey deep into the social mediasphere!
Edit: 19th Jan 2011 – You might find this visual helpful
Can you run a business from a Mac?
I have to confess I am a Mac person through and through. I'm not only in the Apple walled garden, I'm lying there sun-bathing and enjoying the view. I carry my "bag of Apples" to work every-day, which includes my iPhone, iPad and MacBook Air. Back at my home office I have a Mac Pro with all the trimmings. So what with that and the wife and kids fully equipped as well, it's safe to say, faults and all, I like Mac. I guess I love the combination of style and simplicity and when I go see a client, it's always a talking point and ice breaker.
My experience of working with businesses across the UK is that many company directors also think like me and start off by using an Apple MacBook choosing style over functionality. They then take it to the IT department and tell them to "make it work!". Macs have also found their way onto the customer facing receptionists' desk and into some of the smarter estate agents. In fact walking the streets of Covent Garden recently I was struck by how many offices I could see from the pavement were using Macs. I think any IT company or software house these days should be embracing Mac as well as their mainstay PC.
When I started the business back in 2007 I set out to use my Mac as much as I could. This has made me focus on the software we use in the business. When reviewing a system or tool the first thing I look for is a Mac client. No Mac client no point pursuing it. This means we generally use web based systems. Provided I or one of my team has a web browser, we can work anywhere on any platform - PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone - even our Linux and Ubuntu servers.
Using web based solutions also means we operate in a totally integrated way. Kashflow for our accounts, AirDocs for our document management, Online Banking, Email from Google apps, and our own in-house web based system Logrono links everything up. Even our Asterisk phone system sits on a web server somewhere in London and allows Click2Dial in Firefox or flashes up the callers details when the phone rings. Being a support company, TeamViewer was a natural choice because they bothered to create a Mac client.
I'm proud of the systems we have and how we have integrated everything - we hopefully have the sort of systems that would be the envy of many companies and, best of all, it makes us super efficient, with the ability to work anywhere ... and on a Mac.
Now, being realistic, there are somethings a PC does better (or only does). Included in this would be scanning! I dont know of any Mac solution that could scan all-day and as efficiently as Kofax Express although Canon's latest range of scanners are all now shipping with Capture One Touch for Mac.
Even when it comes to Office we use Open Office, which works really well on a PC or Mac and is free. In fact, dear old Microsoft doesn't make much of an appearance in our offices apart from the Windows platform that we need in production. Our sales and admin staff are all Mac users though and I think we create some amazing proposals and customer documents as a result using Apple tools like Pages and Keynote.
So, Mac works for us and the business is still growing. I do appreciate that Windows 7 is a very nice platform but its not exactly innovative and definitely not an inspiration or a joy to use. Does anybody look at a Dell Inspiron and marvel at how it is made? Probably not!
If you are starting a new business then I recommend you start on a Mac. It's certainly worked for me. If you are running an established business then there is little point in changing what works for you. Style over substance never achieves anything but style with efficiency, well, that's worth having.
Is Sage holding back your business?
Like many startups, when I started Click2Scan back in 2007, a spreadsheet was my only way of recording our financial transactions. The busier we got the more complex the spreadsheet became. I soon realised that we needed a proper accounts system and everybody I spoke to would say the same thing - "you want to start using Sage".
Even though my father Brian is an accountant and book-keeper with over 50 years experience I felt Sage was in some way dated or not ready for the new joined up world we are now working in. For example, Sage still had a cost code for Telex? I was also aware of the Sage economy and how there are a myriad of training companies and so called professionals to help you install it and support you.
Another thing that worried me about Sage was it locked you to a particular PC. Now bearing in mind I work from home, from our office in Mere (soon to be Frome) or in the back of the car or in the Knowology office in Bath, how was operating my accounts system from one PC going to help me?
I'm not daft and I'm not naive and I realise that many fantastic businesses have Sage as their accounting system and you can scale up and bla bla bla. But and big but here, we are a small, growing business that operates very flexibly. We have grown 30 - 40% year on year so are probably doing something right and I have to say, Sage hasn't been part of this modest success.
Jeremy Burgess recommended I try out Kashflow back in 2008 and since then we have built our business around it. The great thing about Kashflow is that any one of the team can use it. This means raising invoices becomes part of everybody's job. It isn't the preserve of a once a week accounts lady as is keying in a purchase receipt.
What has been utterly brilliant is our ability to link our internal, home-grown, system Logrono to Kashflow so we can sync our online sales and automtatically raise and record invoices. We have also centralised our customer information and started to merge the islands of information that were growing.
There are many online accounting systems out there and I would just say to any new start or growing business, reasearch them! Take a trial, have a play and see which one fits your requirements. Think to the future though. Will you need to integrate with your internal systems? Can you access it from an iPad whilst on holiday?
I'm sure Sage is great but it isn't for me and funnily enough, it isn't for 10,000 of the Kashflow users or the 100,000 Xero users either. Even our accountant now respects our decision and begrudgingly my mentor Howard, a Sage aficionado, just about accepts our reasoning!