Paperless Office

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rusty12

Limp Gawd
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May 2, 2007
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I’m presently enrolled in an entrepreneurial management class and I’ve been given an assignment which asks us to think of a business and then develop a business plan for it. At the end of the semester my group and I will then be required to present our business plan to a panel of local entrepreneurs.

While at work this afternoon I thought about a business that would specialize in document management and assisting other offices and organizations to become as paperless as possible. I do not know much of anything surrounding this field, but I know that the idea of the “paperless office” has been floating around for years. I have seen some businesses become paperless (or as close as possible) but it was their own IT dept. that implemented the system.

I was hoping I could ask some questions and garner feedback about the idea. Here are my first few basic questions
  • First off, are there businesses that exist and do what I am talking about that I haven’t seen?
  • Do you feel that there is a market for a consultant based business of this type?
  • Do you see this as a profitable concept?
  • What pitfalls could I expect?

While constructing the idea in my head I was talking with a few people who thought the idea was great. One person said that they had worked for a non-profit org recently and did something very similar to this and has seen many companies already go paperless. In my experiences in the office environment, I have not seen what I'm visualizing as something that's commonplace. I'm thinking of a system that is more than simply converting files to PDF and placing them on a network that associates can access. I think of it as a little more in-depth where you need hardware and software that can scan, convert into pdf, and index properly on a secure server. There would have to be a way that you could digitally sign documents, access them, make them portable if need be (maybe using blackberrys or sonys ereader). A document management system of some kind, secure backup system, etc, etc..

I welcome all feedback and suggestions. My whole idea here is clearly in its beginning stages and I’m trying to just get some ideas if this is a business plan I should pursue further for my project or move onto something else. Let me know what you guys think. Thanks!

*I wasn’t exactly sure where the best place for this thread was, so if it doesn’t belong here don’t hate, I apologize, it was the best I could figure.
 
One pitfall I can see is most states require company’s to store financial and employee records in hard copy for a certain period time. So this would not amount to a "paperless office." Just a thought. Good luck, its a great idea and can save company’s a lot of money on toner and paper!
 
xeon711 said:
One pitfall I can see is most states require company’s to store financial and employee records in hard copy for a certain period time. So this would not amount to a "paperless office." Just a thought. Good luck, its a great idea and can save company’s a lot of money on toner and paper!
Click to expand...

and replace it with bandwidth useage and storage...
 
In my business, there was already a company that provided a solution for this. Highly propriety to the industry, but I'm sure there are other things out there for generic document management.

Depends on the business. Most businesses have to keep the original documents around for X years (or months). The key to this:
If the document gets to you as an IMAGE format to start with: it's considered the original.
The pitfall is if you get the paper in, and you scan it in all yourself: you still might have to archive said paper.

Depends on industry. If you can setup partnerships with your vendors, customers to scan you everything: those are your originals.
Some industry you get the paperwork: period... and still have to archive the paper.

Profitable: yes. You can cut several jobs just by implementing a paperless system. In addition, if multiple people have to usually touch the paperwork, you can set that scanned document to go from one user to the next, in a chain automatically through the system.
 
Thanks for the input guys. After explaining the idea to my group they decided that it would be better to go in another direction. (My idea basically got shot down..such is life) Anyway, thanks.

Cheers!
 
Just curious, what did your idea get shot down by? (I thought that would have fun to explore in detail myself)
 
I as well thought the idea would be interesting to further investigate. My group felt that many of our local businesses in the area have already done this to some degree. In other words, they basically felt that the market potential is not as strong as the way I see it. The city my team and I live in happens to be very environmentally friendly, which lends itself as a huge opportunity to capitalize on in my opinion. Such is life though, you win some and you lose some. I think I am going to further research the idea with my professor when I get some free time to see what kind (if any) potential it really holds.
 
We are a non profit agency serving over 1,000 consumers. We went paparless 1.5 years ago. We hired Sharp and got some super fancy (That's what Sharp tells us) top of the line scanners. We scan all of the consumer records and documents into the database on the server. We ran into some annoying problems that the Vendor has yet to resolve. Overall it's okay. The expensive database software that it came with (Liberty.net) is decent. 1.5 years later and tech support or Sharp still has not fixed the annoying bugs. They are working on it I guess...
 
dragontales said:
1.5 years later and tech support or Sharp still has not fixed the annoying bugs. They are working on it I guess...
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Thankfully we did that right- held off on the final 25% of the invoice until it was 100% done (Which it's been MONTHS since they have been "finished", I've never paid the final 25%!!)
 
I haven't read the whole thread, but I would like to mention that some regulation for medical doctors is requiring all information be stored in electronical formats rather than paper format. Your idea could be to create a conversion of paper documents to electonic, and maybe with some text recognition.
 
TechieSooner said:
Depends on the business. Most businesses have to keep the original documents around for X years (or months). The key to this:
If the document gets to you as an IMAGE format to start with: it's considered the original.
The pitfall is if you get the paper in, and you scan it in all yourself: you still might have to archive said paper.
Click to expand...

When I worked for the police dept about 13 years ago we were paperless by scanning and shredding. The scans would end up on a worm drive so that could not be changed at all.
 
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