Paperless office
A good way to save energy and at the same time improve efficiency is to introduce a paperless office. This might seem like a daunting task and should certainly not be taken lightly.
The definition "paperless office" is commonly used in business who are looking to save costs, become more efficient and organised or to save energy. However transitions to a paperless environment is often fraught with seemingly unforeseen complications. Here are some pitfalls and recommendation.
1. Lay out what you are looking to achieve and in what order you wish to implement this. Using spider diagrams to understand and document work-flows is a good starting point and you should remember to look across departments as your paperless implementation could impact your neighbouring department in a detrimental way.
2. Identify the software provider which provides a solution which is suitable to your particular needs. Companies are often sold software which was written for other purposes. The end result is a never-ending software modification at great cost to you and your supplier. The end result is loss of confidence in the software by your customers, your staff and ultimately your provider.
3. Ensure good staff training and awareness of both the motivation behind the transition, the advantages and the pitfalls. Without full staff support you are much more likely to fail rolling out a good paperless office. Equally important is to involve the staff as much as possible as they are will be using the software every day. As a paperless office is rolled out training sessions with Q&A + feedback is essential.
4. Make a decision to use open source, bespoke or off the shelf systems. Each has its good and bad points, dependent on your internal IT skills base, your IT dependants and resources available you should decide what your business needs.
5. Finally, make sure you are considering the compatibility of data with your existing IT infrastructure. Your accounting system should be able to relate to your customer database and your customer database should speak to your customer services database and other systems which you rely on. Poor data structure will drain your budget, cause aggravation with your supplier in the long run and lead to distrust in your systems. Most important this is often very labor intensive and completly the opposite of paperless office as this often required a great deal of paper to manage.
For further information about paperless office contact us on 0207 193 5040 or email mark@knowyourplanet.com
