Achieving a Paperless Office and Collaborate

Can a Paperless Office be Achieved - Yes it Can!

In May 2012 one of our Directors wrote a blog asking this question – can a paperless office become a reality? In the past couple of years of working at Dynamics Consultants, I have seen us print less than a pack of paper, with the only paper I see being the occasional bill, government document or school homework! I think that this clearly shows that it is achievable; in fact many of our customers have adopted the same principles and are reaping the rewards!

What is the Benefit?

Money. It is as simple as that – but actually the financial benefit to a business is not always as obvious as saving money on printing contracts. Working in the world of business management tools we have a very clear insight into the value in saving time and improving productivity for staff:

What could you be doing instead of waiting for a 50 page document to print out. What about when you have filled it in and need to scan it?
How much more can you achieve with electronic documents that you can collaborate on from around the world simultaneously, as well as filing and sharing in a way that means that you can always find the most up to date version?
In fact, the financial benefit of having a modern business goes even further than this. I have had customers reporting that they hold project meetings with customers, from sales people to engineers, collaborating on OneNote. This is a sales tool; their efficient and modern practices set them apart from the competition, helping them to win business.

Finally, getting rid of those filing cabinets might just give you the space that you need to hire new staff – there’s no need to move offices! In fact, we have helped businesses clear whole rooms of file storage by making their files electronic.

Piles of Documents

So what do you do with these documents? Office 365 comes complete with file storage solutions such as OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online, which is not just a place to dump your files, but gives you a range of tools such as permissions, version control, meta data and approvals.

Collaboration in the Cloud

I remember the days where a sales manager would catch a flight to the other side of the world to do business and would take a pdf copy of the latest quote with him, but when he gets there they ask for some additional items to be added. He then spends the next 20 minutes on the phone to staff at the office trying to explain where the document was stored and what to do, meanwhile racking up an international call that, at the time, was more expensive than the flight! The customer then asks technical questions that they need an engineered response to and so have to wait for the engineer to email back once he has returned to the office. Etc etc etc…

All just issues with working overseas?

Not anymore! With business in the cloud, the sales manager can update the system himself, the integrated system (Office 365 integrates with your back office system such as Microsoft Dynamics® NAV) they can automatically produce a quote in seconds and he/she can share it with the customer. The customer asks the technical information and the sales manager makes a free Skype for Business call to the office and using OneNote collaborates together in a meeting, dragging and dropping files, photographing on site and sharing it straight to OneNote.

What do You Need to do?

So how do you get there? Now that you can see that for your business to thrive you need to move forward, not just getting a paperless office but adding tools to really make use of the electronic files. Here are some of the things that you need to think about:

1. Choose your platform for storing electronic files. Make sure it is flexible, will grow with you and is a well supported technology.
2. Work out a structure for how your system will work, with an architecture that works for your business.
3. Compile a strategy for uploading your existing files to the new system.
4. Train your staff in using the new system

We are able to help you with all of the above:

1. Our customers will tell you that we only sell what we think you really need, and very often that is from experience of using it ourselves. In our opinion, the best solution on the market to help businesses run a paperless office through document management is Microsoft Office 365. It’s so good we use it in our offices here in Southampton, Hampshire.
2. We recognise that this technology is probably new to you. We offer a range of scheduled and bespoke training courses to help you with understanding how to own a system like this. Our consultants will work with you to discuss your Information Architecture and how you want to use the features.
3. Whether you want to do it yourself, or hire a third party company to upload your files, we can help you to choose the right path.
4. Our training courses for end users have an extremely high level of customer satisfaction and are flexible to work with varying technical abilities.

Try it Now for Free!

See the blog about the free trial and spend a month finding out about the features and tools available to you.

Jesse Lawrence

Jesse is our marketing manager, keeping an eye on the latest news in the market as well as having worked on the GDPR legislation.