by Kevin J. Fry

The Paperless Office : Equipment

A paperless office is dependent on equipment and technology to organize all of your documents. Depending on your knowledge of computers and technology, you may need to bring in a consultant or have someone within the company help with setting up a network. You will need computers, at least one for every employee that you have. This is because papers do come across a person's desk, and instead of paper being passed from desk, to desk, you would need computer files being passed instead. A lot of the mobile technology will depend on your company's need for employees to be on the road, or off site. As well as everyone having their own computer, a network should be set up along with servers allowing for file sharing, Internet access, and proper permissions for each file. A high-end scanner should be purchased so that documents will be able to be converted onto the screen, and depending on the file type, this file may need to be edited, be put into a database, or just used for reference. A group of people may need to maintain the documents coming in, and sending them to the right people in the office through an e-mail system of some sort. If your company does go away from the office, there are certain things to consider. Employees on the road could be issued a laptop or tablet PC hooked up with a GPS system while traveling. A cell phone to contact customers or contract employers and a PDA if necessary for signatures. These tools would allow a person to work on the road through Wi-Fi or cellular networks to communicate with the office through a special Internet or by having the files made available on-line through a secure network with password protection. Again, with setting up any paperless office, you may need to hire a consultant to help you through the process of converting. Industrial technology

The Paperless Office : Organizing

Opposite of a paperless home, organizing the paperless office should be organized by the customers. This can be done on a file server, and customers could have a folder with their name. The file server would control the permissions given to each customer / client. A database should also be written organizing and providing access to each customer as far as contact information and goods or services they have purchased.

The Paperless Office : Mail

The mail room idea you see in movies as a cluttered existence filled with mail coming in on a daily basis. This is where it would be a good idea to set up an e-mail server for the mail coming in. Every piece of mail could be scanned into the computer and sent to the proper person or department so that it would reach the correct person. This would be to ensure every document would remain in the system until the proper person received it.

The Paperless Office : Office Documents

Office documents vary from office to office, but there seems to be a standard in every office that employees work from. These can placed into the computer as forms. Like on-line forms, you could enter the data that goes into a database. By using software made available from Adobe (like Acrobat), these forms could look, just as they do with the actual form. The difference is that information would now be easily accessible through searchable databases and indexes. These forms would, if needed, could be printed out, or saved as a Portable Document File (PDF), and the best part is that anyone would be able to understand everyone else's handwriting. There would be no data entry in the future because the information would already be made available. There are many different types of office environment software. Microsoft Office, for example, offers a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation and database for an office environment. Another, free alternative, is something called Open Office. Open Office and Microsoft Office are just two of the many office suites available.

The Paperless Office : Billing / Receipts

Both your company and the client must accept any billing agreement. In order for proper procedures and such, e-mails can be sent as well as giving the client access to an on-line portal to where they can pay their bills. Checks could be listed, account information, date paid information, and invoices / receipts could all be viewed by the customer, right on-line, using a secure network. Depending on what kind of technology your client has will depend on weather you and that company could come to and agreement together to find a manner of a paperless solution that will suite both of your needs and wants. I personally think that duplicate receipts should be kept with all credit card transactions and checks, made available on-line through your bank's web site. There are many companies out there offering the service of paperless billing as of right now. With the advancement of technologies, I expect this to only increase as time goes on. Of course, this is an option and not necessarily a requirement. Some companies will offer you a few dollars off just by signing up with such a service. Paperless receipts are mainly given for on-line purchases like in your e-mail for electronic purchases. One company choosing to offer paperless billing is dish network ( http://www.dishnetwork.com/paperless ).

The Paperless Office : Applications

A good office suite combined with a secure web site interface, will lead to a well done paperless office. Training people to use the software to the best of its ability and capability may be the issue. This is where you should bring in a consultant to help you with the changeover to properly receive the right software, hardware, and solution for your specific need.

The Paperless Office : Customer Relations

By not having the snail-mail option of getting to a customer, there are other, more personal ways of getting through to that person. One of those less personal ways are through e-mail. I would not recommend sending new promotions and such to customers unless they really want to kept updated on such things. This makes the customer feel like their receiving e-mail they could do without / spam. Two other ways of good customer relations are through the phone, and through having one of your representatives' visit them personally.