Paperless Office

[brendag]

Hi all, my office is swimming in paper and I'm wondering what software you all have implemented to get rid of all of the excess files. We're looking at maybe getting a good management system with some kind of third party support.

What has been your experience going paperless? What providers have you used? Any input would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Norwayguy]

Hi all, my office is swimming in paper and I'm wondering what software you all have implemented to get rid of all of the excess files. We're looking at maybe getting a good management system with some kind of third party support.

What has been your experience going paperless? What providers have you used? Any input would be greatly appreciated.

I currently use a very easy to implement solution. I have used ACt for Contact Management and I now have a folder on the hard drive for Clients subfolders by first Letter of Last name and finally individual folders by name...Any new forms, apps etc I scan in and save in their folder and attach the file to notes in Act in effect I still have a folder for each client and I pull up any file while in act..it works for me....Now I have to digest what the B/D needs so things may be a changing.

 

[focusgroup]

Just one piece of advice about going paperless. Be sure to back up on a external hard drive. That way when you computer decides to poop itself, you don't have to pay someone to rebuild all the data.

B

 

[briko3]

I use Microsoft OneNote. You can put the actual file on the person's space or you can print ANYTHING to OneNote and the document "prints" to their space instead of just having a file. Very versatile program.

 

[shaedzs]

Going paperless saves my office an enormous amount of time and energy. If you are planning on backing up data to a server, I'd recommend a remote service. This will protect your data from a local catastrophe and save on hardware upgrades over time.

 

[Guest]

I'm about as paperless as can be. Here is how I do it (at the 20,000 foot level!)

1. Client info: Everything goes into my online (i.e. on the web) SugarCRM database (click here for demo) ... names, addresses, and especially notes on conversations... a "daily" log actually. It is important (to me) that the CRM reside on the web so I can hit it anywhere in the world and don't have to worry about my local machine crapping out with a hard-disk crash. It is also crucial that it gets backed-up each hour to another site as well as to my desktop machine. If the internet connection goes down (which is very rare) I can still work on the local copy. (There are lots of back-up options for all CRMs.)

2. Documents: All quotes (life, heath, disability, LTC, etc.) are saved as PDF files. You can put these documents "in" some CRMs "linked" to the client. For technical reasons I don't do that. I use Apple's MobileMe (similar to Microsoft Exchange Server... but easier to use... $99 a year for a ton of disk space. This is also where I backup my CRM database each hour... takes a bit of tech-magic to do this... but not hard... I can help you with it if you want.) The MobileMe server makes it super-easy to share files. It will generate a "link" for you to send to people... like this one which is a flyer about HSABank: http://files.me.com/acanton77/irdw0k.

3. Email: Most CRMs have built in outbound email and when you send one it automatically "links" it to the client so you always have all the notes you've sent to each person. (It sure beats hunting around your "Sent" box on your Outlook or Apple Mail program.)

4. Fax: I don't have a fax machine... not had one for 4 years. I use Receive Fax by Email with Our Internet Faxing Service | MaxEmail and highly recommend it. (There are other services similar... lots of folks like RingCentral.com) I can fax out of my computer by just attaching the PDF or document to an email sent to MaxEmail. The downside is that if you have hardcopy you first have to scan it to a PDF or jpg or some other image file... so you need to have a scanner... an all-in-one printer with a scanner works fine for this. For incoming faxes they give you a phone number that you give to people. They fax you and MaxEmail turns it into a PDF and emails it to you in seconds.

5. For PDF forms: When I get PDF forms to fill out (like pre-screen forms) instead of printing them and filling out by hand, I use a program for the Mac called PDFPen which is similar to a word-processor that lets me modify PDF files. I'm sure there are many similar programs for the PC.

So that's about it. I'm sure there are better ways to organize a paperless office, but this works for me and has for years now. I bet I don't print more than five sheets of paper a week and that is usually something I'm going to bring to someone when I don't want to lug a laptop just to show them one or two pages of a quote or something.

I hope this helps someone. Again, I use the FREE SugarCRM database, but there are tons of others out there. If you don't want to be web-based, I'm sure YIO has all the same features and probably more. Web-based is a "must" for my operation because I have homes in Fair Oaks, California and Palm Beach, FL and I spend a lot of time in airports... where I can use my iPhone to run the agency since it can easily view my Sugar database, my MobileMe forms repository (along with calendar, contacts, etc.)

The only thing I'd like to find is a business card reader (scanner) AND a standalone database for them for the Mac. I don't want to load them into my regular (Mac) AddressBook program. It's not a big deal. They all fit into a shoebox.

HTH.

YMMV.

Al
InsuranceSolutions123 Agency

 

[brendag]

Thanks for all of the input, I will take what everyone had to say in consideration.

I'll keep you all updated as I do my research. If anyone knows of any other information, I'd love to hear about it!

 

[alien612]

I know one system with fully open source. It is DocumentLite. I recommend you this program for using in your office.

It has many interesting new features, including a system for handling email documents. This system is simple and understandable.

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[alphawave2k]

I'm about as paperless as can be. Here is how I do it (at the 20,000 foot level!)


...So that's about it. I'm sure there are better ways to organize a paperless office, but this works for me and has for years now. I bet I don't print more than five sheets of paper a week and that is usually something I'm going to bring to someone when I don't want to lug a laptop just to show them one or two pages of a quote or something.

I hope this helps someone. Again, I use the FREE SugarCRM database, but there are tons of others out there. If you don't want to be web-based, I'm sure YIO has all the same features and probably more. Web-based is a "must" for my operation because I have homes in Fair Oaks, California and Palm Beach, FL and I spend a lot of time in airports... where I can use my iPhone to run the agency since it can easily view my Sugar database, my MobileMe forms repository (along with calendar, contacts, etc.)

Al
InsuranceSolutions123 Agency

Wow, you have said a mouthful here...good information and thanks for sharing. Does it matter what kind of local machine you have? ie. PC or MAC?
Alph-red-o

 

[robertwawee]

Try PaperPort. It's user-friendly, intuitive and allows you to manage your documents in an easy-to-use, visually friendly, manner. I seldom print documents these days. Much easier to make doc files into PDFs and email them to the district or home office.