Creating a paperless office is process, but that process can be fast and simple with a little preparation. Some well thought out planning is necessary in making a paperless environment successful in your business. At OfficeDrop, we have done a good job eliminating most paper usage (other than the hundreds of thousands of customer documents we scan every month). We would recommend the following steps if you wish to go paperless.

Going paperless – Preparation Checklist

Identify Your Goals

Why do you want to go paperless? To reduce clutter? Streamline information access? Maybe you want to make it easy to access critical business information from outside the office, or maybe you just want a place to securely backup your data. Determining what you want from a document scanning service will allow you do choose the best method of attaining it.

Review Your Current Process

Consider what happens to paper when it first enters your business. How does this differ from what happens to digital information? Determine who needs access to the data, how frequently it is touched, and whether it gets photocopied, faxed or shared with anyone inside or outside of the organization. This will allow you to determine ideal storage methods and formatting for your information.

Identify Your Files

Which pieces of paper do you want to turn digital? Compare this to your process above. What currently happens with the files you want to digitize? How will you digitize the new files of the same type that you get in the future? Answering these questions will help us understand your situation, allowing us to give you better storage recommendations and price estimates.

Implement

Now that you know which files you will turn digital, implement your program. By now you should know how you are going to deal with the back files that you currently have, and how you will handle the new ones. With the previous steps complete, talking with a OfficeDrop representative to get you started will be fast and easy.

Sustain

The best paperless systems require continuous work to maintain, because paper will continue to come into your business. Keep it under control by developing habits of promptly digitizing and storing documents as they enter your workspace. Develop a schedule for submitting your paper documents, and we will continue to keep your office organized.

OfficeDrop can help your office go paperless!

Let OfficeDrop help you go paperless – our document scanning and online document management services can help you implement and sustain your paperless office.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 15th, 2009 at 12:42 pm and is filed under Benefits, Customer Satisfaction, Document Management, Organization, Paperless. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.