There use to be serious technical hurdles to creating a paperless office. That isn’t the case any more. The components of a paperless office are readily available and not particularly expensive. Read on for some great resources that will help you “go paperless”.
- 8 Tips for Going Paperless-Sheila Riley
Now that technology offers so many different options for organizing documents and facilitating communication, using telecommunication instead of regular mail is a good option for many people. This article gives some ideas that were developed and used by the Blue Valley school district in Overland Park, KS. - The Perils and Perks of Going Paperless-James Champy
As technology advances, many companies, especially those in the health care field, have begun to move toward paperless systems. This article explains some of the benefits and drawbacks of moving to a paperless system. - Going Paperless: Is It (Finally) Time?-Chad Dickerson
This article explores the challenges that a person faces when switching over to a paperless system. The aspect of the paperless conversion that the author focuses on is the type of scanner that best fits this type of an adjustment. - Going Paperless-Unclutterer
Sometimes the things that would have never been thought possible in earlier years become a reality. Paperless communication is one of those things. This article talks about some of the paper clutter that can be eliminated with a scanner and a bit of time. The author also provides a helpful link to another article on going paperless. - The Pain of Going Paperless-Gene Marks
Even though technology can accomplish wonderful things and save tremendous amounts of time, it can also be overrated. As the author of this article points out, sometimes the old way of doing things is the more efficient way. - Going Paperless-Small Notebook
As paper clutter builds up, often so does a person’s level of frustration! The author of this article shares their method of keeping paper clutter down to a minimum by using a computer and scanner, while acknowledging that paper is still good for some things. - Get Organized and More Efficient by Going Paperless-Money Blue Book
Creating a paperless work space is, indeed, usually more efficient than its cluttered counterpart. The author of this article points out that, in addition to helping you cut down on mess, a paperless system enables a person to search through documents and keep from misplacing them as easily. - Pushing Paper Out the Door-Hannah Fairfield
In this article, the author tells how one family organized what would normally be processes that use paper into paperless systems. The high cost of ink in recent years has also made the use of scanners and computers for storing information an attractive proposition.
Thank you very much for this nice collection. I personally have gone almost paperless in the office and it significantly contributing to keeping a clean desk.
I also have been writing on how to keep a clean desk in my Time Management Master blog together with a collection of more than 200 concrete time saving tips. These tips apply at home, at work or on the road.
Here is link to all tips on how to keep a clean desk:
http://memytime.wordpress.com/category/at-work/clean-desk-at-work-time-management/
I still use paper a lot, especially when I’m traveling. This is a good list though. Got some tips I could use.
Thanks Anna!
Hello
Do you have any recommendations for how to go paperless with our internal processes. We perform a lot of reconciliations using primarily excel. Once each rec is done it is signed off by the preparer and then by the reviewer.
Ideally these reconciliations could be saved electronically rather than on paper but we would need to be able to digitally sign them (once by preparer and once by reviewer) and then save as pdf’s (presumably). How can we digitally sign a document with 2 signatures and then lock it down so it cant be changed in future. Also how do you prevent your digital signature being lifted from one document and saved to another document without your knowledge.
You’ll need to work with an actual digital signature (not just an image of your signature). We’ve written about it here and the same process can be used for documents as well as email. You will probably need to use Acrobat Professional to do it if you want PDFs. There is also a way to sign the Excel document directly.
I use a Tablet PC (Lenovo X200) and eSign Online technology from http://www.gopaperless.com. This way I can capture signatures directly onto documents on my computer by using the stylus pen on my tablet pc screen. The eSign Online technology is extremely secure. The signatures are time-stamped and the IP address of the signer’s computer is attached to the signature so there is no chance of forging or “copy & pasting” a signature. The file is sent automatically from the first signer to all signees via email and automatically collated into one fully signed file which is then sent back to the original sender.
All my documents are then stored online in a “vault” that can be accessed from any computer through the http://www.gopaperless.com website. Easy, streamlined, instant, paperless!!
Works for me :)
Hi, paperless office is a really good thing. But, get the right IT solution first. Once you have the right software, which meets your requirements and needs, you won’t go back to paper archive. We have in our work a lot of certificates, customer data, we find each needed documents in seconds by using OCRkit (text recognition). If you need to read through 100 of pages of business report, you can just find the needed page by using a keyword. And if you have the right quality scan solution, that replaces nearly completely your paper archive. F.e. we are obliged to keep some documents for legal reasons for some years, we are working on to agree with authorities that we can replace paper archive with electronic archive. Of course, that is a more complex process, but step by step we agree getting there. We use ExactScan Pro (exactscan.com) – software for scanning documents, making them smaller, excellent quality and it has OCR already built in. Plus the company offers very good support, even with individual solutions – adjustments, plus this one software supports over 400 scanners.