Paperless Office for Small Offices
I implemented a paperless office several years ago, which was successful for a short period of time. I even went so far as to purchase an early HP tablet PC. For a short period of time it was extremely effective, and I was very happy.
At the zenith of my paperless office experiment I was able to get word document (a contract) in an email, digitally sign it with the tablet PC, print it to a virtual PDF printer, and email the signed document back as if I had printed, signed, scanned and emailed the contract. I was enthusiastic and efficient.
However, ultimately the experiment failed -- because I concentrated on maintaining a paperless office and not taming the paper flow. I scanned everything, even magazine clippings. I would spend too much time scanning, renaming files, and organizing them.
Worse yet, I backed up the files onto CD-Rs, but didn't close out the sessions (I think you know where this is going to go...). Over time, the CDRW drive burned out, followed by a hard drive failure. As many of you know, when you attempt to open a multisession CDR on a CDRW drive from another manufacturer... Lets just say I was anxious until I was able to recover the data.
Now I am older and wiser and going to start again, and along the way I will keep the readers updated with my progress.
Paperless Office Goals:
- I'm keeping the filing cabinet. My goal isn't be come fully, 100% paperless. That would be absurd. Contracts, leases, legal documents, etc., should be preserved in their original state.
- Should cost no more than $700. Assuming you already have a computer, $700 is more than enough to put together a paperless office setup. The most expensive component is the scanner.
- Convenience is paramount. I failed the first time because it was too much of a hassle to scan, organize, or retrieve documents. Compounding this, I originally attempted to scan every scrap of paper I encountered. This time I will place more emphasis on workflow.
- Secure. I will be using GPG for encryption.
- Robust. I will be using subversion for a repository.
- Platform Independent. I am using several variants of Linux and Windows. I need a solution that can be implemented on both sides of the OS fence.
