Saturday, February 20, 2010

What does paperless mean? What type of paperless software is out there?

When we examine the paperless office, or th possibility of the paperless office, what exactly does "paperless" mean?  Yes paperless means reducing the burden of paper, and every one knows that this means utilizing some type of scanning technology, but what is the best way to go paperless?

Here are some different levels of scanning and capture, that will help you move paperless in small steps:
  • Basic Scanning - most offices do this today to create a paperless environment.  They are leveraging either their scanning MFP/Copier/Fax, or they have desktop scanners.
  • Advanced Scanning - this level is  usually accomplished through utilizing additional software to aid in the scanning and organization of documents.  Some software at this level includes OCR Software, OCR to PDF, and tools to organize your scanned images.
  • Basic Capture - Document Capture software provides tools to make the whole scanning and capture process more efficient, and typically utilizes barcodes and barcode processing, advanced OCR, Advanced Data Extraction, etc.
  • Advanced Capture - Advanced Capture Software provides all the bits and pieces needed to facilitate an environment with minimal paper, and provides maximum efficiency through extensive feature set.  An example would be a SharePoint Imaging application that not only allows capture, but also links directly into Microsoft SharePoint.
Reducing paper is fantastic, and can really help the bottom line, but take it slow, as it is a cultural change, and your people need to be comfortable with each level of software above before they move to the next.

1 comment:

  1. Informative, keeping a paperless office using a software that helps is an interesting idea, but for us, we are also looking into ways for automated bill pay will this help in that as well?

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