The paperless office has been an unfulfilled dream for what feels like forever, much to the relief of printer and paper manufacturers and filing cabinet vendors. We're still up to our armpits in hard copies of documents, invoices, receipts, business cards, spreadsheets, and who knows what else, much of it begging to be filed.
But despite the mountains of paper that threaten to topple on our heads, nobody wants to actually do filing. Almost anything is better than sorting papers, classifying them, labeling file folders, and bandaging the inevitable paper cuts. And the Finance department tends to look askance at blood-stained documents.
Fortunately for weary filing-phobes, there are solutions to the problem other than accidentally shredding the whole mess (Oops!). With a little bit of technology, some planning and setup time, and (alas) an initial binge of effort, those ugly grey filing cabinets and mouldering stacks of tattered documents can become a thing of the past.
How? Go electronic. Turn the paper into bits and bytes, the filing cabinets into disk drives, and the folders into a directory structure.
But before you run out and spend money, some thinking is required, says professional organizer Deanne Kelleher, Founder and Principal of Toronto, Canada's kAos Group. All scanners are not created equal, and some are better at specific tasks than others. A whopping desktop scanner the size of a network laser printer is of no use to someone on the road; there are briefcase-sized portable scanners that'll deal with their accumulated receipts and business cards.
On the other hand, a busy procurement department's collection of invoices and other paperwork probably needs something more robust: a fast scanner with an automatic document feeder (ADF) as well as flatbed scanning. And the definition of "fast" – or at least, fast enough – varies in proportion to the volume of paper to be scanned at any single time. Also think about whether you need to scan color (which also affects storage requirements), and whether you want to use optical character recognition (OCR) to translate the scans, or portions thereof, into text.
Another question to ask: Are the documents single or double-sided? Flipping sheets to capture both sides is both error-prone and a real time-waster, so it makes sense to buy a scanner with automatic duplex scanning if you need both sides of most pages. Also find out if the ADF can cope with everything you want to scan. Can it, for example, feed taxi chits and receipts as well as larger items such as invoices?
Fortunately, scanner manufacturers give us plenty of choices. HP, for example has scanners to suit virtually every need, from a USB powered mobile scanner to network-connected monsters that capture both sides of the page in a single pass at rates of up to 60 pages per minute and 120 images per minute.
It goes without saying that you need disk space on which to store those lovely scans. Your scanner vendor may provide some guidance as to how much space each document will occupy. And don't be stingy when allocating disk space. Like coat hangers and paperclips, documents tend to reproduce when left unattended, so you can count on using more space than initially expected as new candidates for electronic storage poke their heads up.
On top of that, you need adequate backup space somewhere. It could be on tape, or another disk, or in the cloud, but now that the paper is going away, you need a safe spot to preserve those files if your primary storage goes toes-up. Be sure to set up an automatic backup schedule; don't rely on someone remembering to do the job manually.
A USB stick, by the way, is not a good backup location, according to Kelleher. It's much too easy to lose or damage. Small portable hard drives can also be subject to disaster.
Next up: a document management system to ensure you can find that one invoice for twelve purple people eaters when the auditors ask for it. Before you cringe and flee, we're not necessarily talking about a complex software package. Document management systems can be as basic as a designated directory structure and file naming convention, if that's all you need, or it can be more elaborate. One company of Kelleher's acquaintance developed a simple SQL Server application (the developer said it took about a week to build) that accepts input directly from the scanner, allows manual entry of a couple of key fields such as purchase order number, and lets users query and report on the database, using those fields to retrieve further information from other databases. Using the purchase order number, for example, users can find documents using the vendor name, product purchased, and even the name of the person who placed the order. If need be, they can view the image of the invoice itself.
If that's not good enough, full-fledged document management systems ranging from open source products such as OpenDocMan or Alfresco through ultra-powerful commercial systems like OpenText will likely do the job.
Much of document management, however, doesn't involve technology as much as it involves policies and procedures, Kelleher says. Everyone has to agree on meaningful document and directory naming schemes, and stick to those conventions. Otherwise, the same chaos that affected the paper piles will create virtual dump bins where it's impossible to find anything. Create a workflow that ensures incoming documents are processed quickly, not allowed to sneak onto Matterhorns of mess again.
Once the initial scanning flurry is complete, the worst is over; all you have to do is keep up with ongoing volume. But there are two more critical tasks to perform before the detritus can be discarded. The first thing to do is verify that the scans are usable. This should be done as soon as possible after the initial scan, before the source documents are lost in the compost heap of time, so problems can be quickly remedied. Then back up the scans, whether they're in a database or simply in directories on a disk. Yes, it's paranoid. Humor me.
Now you're ready to banish all that paper to storage or the shredder.
