office wants to go paperless, any help ?, any ideas

[kermalou]

i work in an accounting office and we are up to our knees in paper, the office manager (me) wants to go paperless.

any ideas about scanners and software????

and is it really worth it?

 

[godspeedx]

paper is good,
go kill them trees

actually i can't really help you out, probably shouldn't have replied but im bored

 

[Czar]

I'v been working at VISA for the last few years during the summers and we have that there

using some program from an Icelandic company called Fakta, the program is called... viewer
http://www.fakta.is/DesktopDefault.aspx?English=true

and then we have a few very fast scanners with paper feeders, dont remember the brand.. though I'v ordered at least one and installed very many

 

[CPA]

You can source out the scanning, but there is no way to go totally paperless, auditors don't like it.

 

[GoodRevrnd]

Docstar. Expensive (20k-50k for system + 10k/yr support or something), but a lot of places like insurance agencies and accounting firms seem to use it.

You could always go with Paperport and scan to pdf's. *snicker*

 

[AvesPKS]

Heh...the office I worked in has been trying to go paperless for the past few years. Those old people just don't trust those confounded computers, though, and insist on making paper copies of everything.

 

[vi edit]

You could chase down a Xerox rep in your area and have them demo you their Document Centers and Docushare system.

Pretty cool stuff. Reasonably priced too.

Another thing is to get a PC/Server based fax server, instead of using stand alone fax machines. HUGE returns on that, if you do lots of faxing (100+ pages a day).

 

[kranky]

Scanning documents is a snap.

Figuring out the best way to store them and retrieve them is 99% of the effort. There are plenty of companies that do nothing but advise people on how to do this. It's one of those projects that sounds a lot simpler than it is, and the more you get into it, the more complex it becomes.

 

[kermalou]

i was thinking about paperport and scanning them as pdf files, does anyone have experience with that?

 

[GoodRevrnd]

Originally posted by: kermalou
i was thinking about paperport and scanning them as pdf files, does anyone have experience with that?

Well, you're looking at scanning 6 pages per minute with no automated archival and cataloguing solution, and being responsible for maintaining redundancy and support on your own vs. 40 pages per minute + and a completely maintianed, archived, and catalogued system on a professional solution. For an accounting firm especially I don't think this is a place to be cheap.

 

[vi edit]

Originally posted by: kermalou
i was thinking about paperport and scanning them as pdf files, does anyone have experience with that?

Your biggest problem is going to be efficiency. And that's a pretty broad term. Most hand made pdf's, hand made meaning throwing a sheet of paper into a scanner and scanning it into a pdf document are HUGE in terms of file size. A single page can be upwards of 60k to 100k depending on how high of a resolution you scan at. That 5 or 10 page document just turned into a 500k-1 meg file. Size adds up FAST. When you start filling up a directory browsing times become long. The time to open the document grows long. It just get's messy after a while.

The best way to go straight from the native application (if you can) into adobe. Documents passed through the acroboat plugin are roughly 1/10th the size of identical pdf's made off a scanner.

 

[Geekbabe]

Originally posted by: vi_edit
You could chase down a Xerox rep in your area and have them demo you their Document Centers and Docushare system.

Pretty cool stuff. Reasonably priced too.

Another thing is to get a PC/Server based fax server, instead of using stand alone fax machines. HUGE returns on that, if you do lots of faxing (100+ pages a day).

big thumbs up on the PC Fax Server

 

[vi edit]

I mentioned Xerox eariler. They have a program called flowport(at least I think that's it). Flowport allows you to make cover sheets with with a thing called a "data glyph" on it that you can devise. The data glyph tells the copier to execute different commands with the documents.

For example - you could have a huge pile of papers that were all invoices for the month of january. Say you have a directory on your network like //fileserver/documents/invoices/month/january

Well, using the flowport program, you could whip up a quick coversheet with a data glyph that would take all of those invoices, scan them into PDF's, and then dump them into the directory that you designate.

All you do then is put the coversheet on top of the documents, put it in your document feeder, press go, and then go get a cup of coffee. Let the machine do the work for you.

 

[kermalou]

any ideas on scanners???

 

[manly]

Paperport is great for personal and even light business use.

It doesn't scan to PDF, it scans to a JPEG format, but it wraps the image inside a Paperport file type so that you can annotate/tag the image with meta-information. The file sizes are fairly reasonable (as reasonable as JPEG can be, depending on the scanning parameters). You use either the Paperport app or a viewer to look at the document. In brief, it works pretty well.

The two common issues to deal with are:

• You'll need a high-speed scanner with an auto-document feeder for efficiency.
• You'll need some way of organizing the collection of files on disk.

Paperport works with files in the filesystem, hence it's relatively easy to use. However, that means that you have to organize the files yourself (how are you ever going to find the file you need?). I believe Paperport does have some search engine capabilities, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't OCR every document. Paperport just did a new joint venture linking its software with Oracle RDBMS, so maybe it's gaining power and functionality at this time.

As much as I like Paperport, I'd be very hesitant to pitch it to any business as an efficient paperless solution. Like I said, it might be okay if you're on a small budget and can devise an end-to-end solution that works for your needs. If you're up to the task, I'd work on it on personal time and consult the services.

 

[JetsFanatic]

Since we went paperless a couple years ago

we have been using more and more paper ????????????

 

[kermalou]

maybe some confusion, but no completely paperless. We need a soluction for the old files that we have. WE will always need paper, at least for now. I need a way to archive the old working paper files.

 

[codehack2]

I architected/deployed a "paperless system" for the Fortune 500 company I work for. We went with Legato's Xtender products. The products work great and can interface into many of your legacy systems that spawn the piles of paper... i.e. invoicing, contract systems. I'll tell you honestly, that implementing a system like this is far easier than changing the culture at your office... and without that, the system is useless. I'd suggest that if you company is indeed serious that they nominate a product champion and get buy in and commitment from each department head.

CH2

 

[kermalou]

Originally posted by: codehack2
I architected/deployed a "paperless system" for the Fortune 500 company I work for. We went with Legato's Xtender products. The products work great and can interface into many of your legacy systems that spawn the piles of paper... i.e. invoicing, contract systems. I'll tell you honestly, that implementing a system like this is far easier than changing the culture at your office... and without that, the system is useless. I'd suggest that if you company is indeed serious that they nominate a product champion and get buy in and commitment from each department head.

CH2

we are but a small humble compnay of 12 employees, there are no department heads, let alone departments.....