A new study shows that offices that reduce their use of paper can dramatically increase their ability to respond to customer needs. The study, done by AIIM, finds that “canning and capture can seriously improve customer response times — typically between 2 and 3 times faster, but in many cases 5 and 10 times faster.”
That’s a big deal!
The study also talks about how more and more companies are equipping remote workers with tablets and portable scanning devices to facilitate document scanning. This totally makes sense.
Here is an image from the study, which you can access from the link above. Basically, a large number of companies are scanning documents for archive purposes, but there are a large number of businesses that go beyond the occasional scanning and use digitization for indexing or making documents smarter or easier to find.
At OfficeDrop, we think that cloud capture can really make you more responsive to your client’s needs. In fact, we use our own online cloud storage to store important documents that we access all the time – everything from invoice to legal documents that we chat with our investors about, etc.
If you already have a scanner or multi-function printer but you’d like to move to cloud storage of your scans, give the $19.99 ScanDrop for the Mac a try. ScanDrop works with Evernote, Google Docs or OfficeDrop’s cloud service, but scanned files can also be saved on Dropbox or whatever other cloud service you utilize.
You can check out our review from March into a fuller look at the service. If you want to give it a try without dropping $20, the company offers the free ScanDrop Lite allowing scanning of up to 15 pages.
We couldn’t have said it better ourselves!
Get organized this year with OfficeDrop. It’s never been a better time to get your files into the cloud. You’ll feel much more relaxed once your important documents are saved in the cloud, and the anywhere, anytime access the cloud gives you will make you more productive this year!
One of OfficeDrop’s most powerful tools is the document search engine that comes with each OfficeDrop account. You can find words, numbers and phrases within your files – fast!
OfficeDrop’s search is a little different than traditional document search that you may be familiar with, because OfficeDrop looks within your files for the search. This includes doing something other services don’t offer – optical character recognition “OCR”.
OCR and Document Search
OCR (optical character recognition) is the software we use to turn a simple scanned image of your paper into a fully text-searchable digital document. Once OCR is employed, applications can recognize individual characters and effectively “read” the document. OCR is the software that makes it possible to text-search your scanned documents.
Document Phrase Search with OfficeDrop
Many of our clients have thousands of files stored in the OfficeDrop system, so narrowing down the search quickly may seem daunting. Thankfully, with document phrase search, finding the right file quickly becomes a lot more manageable.
Here is how phrase search works. Use quotation marks around a series of words to narrow down your search to words that appear in that specific order. So, if you put “invoice number” in quotes in the search box, the OfficeDrop search would first return results with those words next to each other.
Phrase Search
That’s how easy it is! And phrase search works on your mobile devices as well, so you can use it on the go.
OfficeDrop is very pleased to announce that we have an iPhone app! The new app brings you the power that you would have if you were using your computer’s web browser – but now you can access at any time and anywhere. Best of all, the app turns your iPhone into a multi-page PDF scanner, so you can capture paper documents and convert them into text-searchable PDFs on the go. Create PDFs, search PDFs, view and organise PDFs – all on your iPhone. We know that users of the OfficeDrop Andriod app are really into OfficeDrop on their phone – and we hope that iPhone users will be too!
Scan Paper, Text-Search, Browse, Share Documents and More from your iPhone
With the iPhone app, users can snap a photo of a paper document and scan it directly to the cloud. Once an item is scanned, users can browse the document, apply labels, search text using OfficeDrop’s Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology, share and access documents from anywhere with OfficeDrop’s cloud filing cabinet.
OfficeDrop iPhone App Video
Using the App
When you first log in using the iPhone app, you’ll see your OfficeDrop folders. You can browse to specific files just as you would if you were looking for files on your computer’s hard drive. Simply touch the folder and navigate to the document you want.
You can also navigate by labels; simple hit the funnel icon in the top left and select the labels (or folders if you want) and only look at items with those particular labels.
The funnel also allows you to find your favorite or recent documents.
Search
Search is, of course, the best way to find your documents. At the bottom of the app’s screen you’ll see the search button. Touch that to text search within your documents. Since OfficeDrop makes the documents you upload into the system totally text searchable, you know that finding your files is only a quick keyword search away.
Scan from the iPhone
The newest iPhones have pretty decent cameras, which means they can be used as a scanner replacement when you are on the go. Using the OfficeDrop app you can scan multipage PDFs quickly and easily from anywhere.
Push the upload button at the center bottom of the app to start scanning. You can either use images already in your phone’s photo gallery or snap a new photo using the app. If you take a picture with the camera using the app you’ll have the option to crop the image, rotate it, add a second (or third, etc) page. At the time of upload you can select a destination folder and add labels. You can also store the item locally, but it will only get OCR when uploaded. If you are in an area without cell phone coverage the app will store the scan on your phone and upload it when you get back into good reception.
“We’re changing the way people collect and share information on the go,” explained OfficeDrop CEO Prasad Thammineni. “By using the iPhone as a powerful scanning device, our users can share documents with teams in seconds, and search all of their items in the cloud, regardless of their location. OfficeDrop is making remote working easier than ever.”
The OfficeDrop iPhone app is free to download, and connects with OfficeDrop’s cloud filing cabinet. The free version of OfficeDrop cloud filing system gives users 1 GB of storage, 50 pages of text-searchable scans per month and will produce the top three search results.
This app compliments our Android Scanner app; and iPad users should expect a refresh of the existing iPad app in the near future.
The Professional Organizer’s site, Living Peace, has a great blog post on decluttering. The blog quotes from the New York Times best selling book, “The Happiness Project,” and lists the different types of clutter – from aspirational clutter (I’ll use this some day!) to freebie clutter (hey, it’s free, I’ll get two!) When you understand why you are keeping clutter, and can objectively decide that there is no need to have it anymore, tossing the clutter out and getting organized is much easier! Check out the piece.
There is a great piece on Yahoo by David Sieberg on how to avoid working for your technology solutions instead of having the technology work for you.
He says that keeping up with technology can be overwhelming, and many people are now having problems telling their personal and work life apart. Always having access to email and other work files via cell phones and laptop computers can really keep you from focusing on your family and personal life!
David’s tips on avoiding “digital slavery” (as he calls it) are:
Go for face-to-face contact
Use tech to break bad tech habits
Put down your smart phone
Create boundaries between your tech self and your “real” self
Alright! The results are in! Thanks to everyone who voted for the messiest office in our Messiest Office Contest!
The finalists had some real paper problems, but we hope that the following winners will use the prizes that they’ve “earned” to get on the path to a more organized office.
First Place Prize
First place, and winner of $400 Gift Card to Staples, 1/2 Day Virtual Coaching Session with Joshua Zerkel of Custom Living Solutions, 6-month subscription to OfficeDrop is:
“I Had It Just a Minute Ago” by Tim Kral
Messiest Office Winner
Some of the comments on this post were amazing: “When we have to go in to do something on his computer, we let others know so that if we don’t come out in 10 minutes they will come looking for us!”
Second Place Prize
Second Place, and winner of a Canon imageFORMULA P-150 Portable Document Scanner, 6-month subscription to OfficeDrop is:
“Messiest Office” by David Holst
Third Place Prize
Third place, and winner of $50 Gift Card to Staples, 6-month subscription to OfficeDrop is:
“Tsunami in Home Office” by James Stinnett
Thanks again to everyone who participated, either by voting or uploading a picture of their messy office!
At OfficeDrop, we hope that we can help you go paperless and get organized with our line of scanner software, our mail in scanning service and our desktop to cloud digital filing system and cloud content management service. Contact us if we can help you get organized!
Thanks to everyone who attended last week’s webinar on Getting Organized and Boosting Productivity through better office and paper management/organization! We had a large number of attendees and there were some great questions at the end of the web class.
Get Organized and Boost Productivity
This webinar was led by certified Professional Organizer and Productivity Consultant Joshua Zerkel. Josh tackled the tricky problem of dealing with documents in a busy office environment, and made it clear that there are substantial benefits to greater organization. He went over everything from setting up the office for optimized productivity to organizing the flow of paper into and out of the office.
Here is a video of the Get Organized webinar:
Other Webinars on Productivity and Organized Offices
Check out the video on Mastering the Paperless Office, using slides from Josh Zerkel! Learn the best steps to begin on the path to reducing your office’s use of paper and hear about some great technologies you can use to make your quest to go paperless easier!
The application period for entering OfficeDrop’s Messiest Office Contest is rapidly coming to an end! All you have to do to enter is upload a photo of your office. You can win some great prizes, like a new scanner, organizational consulting, a $400 gift certificate to Staples and a subscription to OfficeDrop! You don’t want to miss this!
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OfficeDrop’s Document Management and Document Scanning Service Blog
OfficeDrop, formerly Pixily, helps small businesses and home offices go paperless and manage their paper and digital documents online. OfficeDrop provides an award-winning online digital filing system & scanner software. In this blog, we’ll discuss cool ways customers are using our service to tame their paper problem and get organized. We hope to share tips and tricks we are learning as we help our clients scan, sync, search and share documents. We’ll also highlight new features in our digital filing system, let you know what the press is saying about us and keep you up to speed with the goings-on at OfficeDrop! Paper. Digital. Anywhere.
At OfficeDrop, we think that cloud capture can really make you more responsive to your client’s needs. In fact, we use our own online cloud storage to store important documents that we access all the time – everything from invoice to legal documents that we chat with our investors about, etc.
