Re: [vox] Paperless Office Transition
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Re: [vox] Paperless Office Transition
On 09/12/2011 08:03 PM, Kevin Schultz wrote:
> Does anyone here work in an environment which has transitioned to a
> paperless (or paper-less, as it may be) office?
> I have been tasked with working as part of a team to transition our
> large governmental agency to a paperless office. :o)
> Curious what opportunities, pitfalls, ideas everyone has.
I'm will be saying something which people will say I have a
very cynical view. Yes, and it is because I have seen what
I'm about to say happen over and over again.
Lets start with the big opportunities:
1) Saving money
a) Reduction in amount of paper order $$$$
b) Fewer copies/printers $$$$
2) Higher security (fewer secretes being printed and put into
garbage for some dumpster diver to find)
a) Reduction in shredding fees due to less paper
3) Information can quickly be found via an internal web
Now the big pitfalls
1) Dose your company come under SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley)? If you
are, learn all about the requirements for data retention.
2) Can be a no-win position. Meaning you could be set-up
to fail. Reason is in most cases management doesn't really want
to give up their paper. If management doesn't set a good
example no one else will follow.
3) Expect it to be a multi-year change over.
4) Using the same server for the internal information which is
used for the external company webs server. There should be an
air wall between the two servers.
5) Company too tight with needed funds to buy what they
may call 'unneeded hardware'.
I'm sure others will either have more items or disagree with
What I suggest is you start at the top of the company. Find out
how the CEO, CTO, CFO, CIO and all, use paper. Replace each
and every reports with an computer version. This means not
only the paper they produce but also any paper report which
they receive. Start with the reports they receive and convert
them to computer reports. By getting the top level switch over
this can be a big win, as it show them you are making progress.
And as I said earlier, if you don't have their support you
have failed to begin with. Everyone looks up and well say
"But the boss isn't paper-less why force me to be".
Next find who issue all internal memos. Get them to start using
E-mail instead. Convince upper management to penalize those
who continue to issue internal memos on paper.
H.R. will be a hard group to switch over. They and accounting
are forced to maintain paper.
Next move down the management ladder and repeat doing away
with their paper until you get down to the individual
Do not start with the individual contributer and work up the
management ladder. You will fail. Always start at the top
and work down. Each time you replace a report management will
see it and this is a win for you. Starting at the bottom and
working up, management doesn't see the change. Nor do they
buy into it. Get them to buy into it from the start.
While you are replacing reports, always look for the tonnage
report. The biggest, thickest report. Replacing that one first
will be a win.
The next thing to look for is some person who takes a print-out
and scan it to an image PDF. Train everyone who generate reports
to export the file to PDF and not scan a printed version. This
will reduce the size of the PDF. Images are fat. A text PDF is
thiner (even if it has graphs included in it). My friend Craig
is a school librarian and he reports the school office staff
will scan a paper version to PDF all of the time. Thus making
it slow as the file is open.
Any file which gets E-mail to any group of people (more then
just a few people) should be put online and only mail a URL to
where the file is stored. The first office staff who mails a
large PDF to the whole company should be fired just as soon as
they hit the send button. If top level management does
something like this, they should forfeit any and all bonuses
they would receive for the year.
You should also realized you may never be able to be 100%
paper-less. But you should be able to reduce the amount of
paper by a large amount.
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