In part 1 of this post we discussed some of the advantages of paperless office services as well as the fact that there are two major approaches that a company can take when adopting paperless office services and these are taking the big plunge and dipping in a toe.
Taking the Big Plunge: The big plunge can be a relatively intimidating approach. This approach requires a big budget, resources and time. Implementing the paperless office all at once requires: lots of consultation and preparation with employees. It requires a strong, visible mandate from senior management. It requires a certifiable, formal process of employee training. It requires detailed documentation of the re-engineering processes. It will affect every corner of an organization. It most likely will be relatively expensive, require consultants and compress a lot of activity into a time frame that is rarely met. This project is all or nothing and resources will be consumed and money will be spent until implementation is complete.
Dipping in a Toe: Starting a paper-free office at the departmental level is a practical and low risk approach. Commonly it is the departments themselves that recognize their problem and are looking for a solution. The risk and cost of a departmental paperless office services is not too high and if it never expands beyond the specific department it can be easily justified. If this department succeeds the solution can be expanded to include other departments. New departments implementing a paperless office can learn from the test departments successes and errors. Taking the dip in a toe approach allows your company to gradually shift to a paperless office and allows a company to become comfortable with the process without being fully entrenched.
Every business want to find a way to reduce paper usage, encourage keeping and sharing their documents in compliance. Document management software has broken the paradigm of the paperless office services being expensive, complicated and hard to use. With a relatively small investment and in a short amount of time a departmental solution can be running and setting a model for the rest of your organization.
For more information about paperless office services, contact OSAM Document Solutions, Inc.
