The following article is reprinted from the April 2009 Plugged In column of Society of American Florists' (SAF) Floral Management Magazine. SAF's Floral Management is distributed to more than 11,000 SAF members and is the floral industry's premier floral business practices publication.
Want to save trees and money at the same time? Use less paper. This month, we demystify the idea of a paperless office with practical strategies and solutions.
The Pros of Paperless
Going paperless will help you:
Save on paper costs, toner and ink. A ream of paper costs $6; toner for most laser printers goes for around $80 for each cartridge and ink for inkjets is at least $15 per cartridge.
Reduce clutter. Never buy another file cabinet. Start saving documents as electronic files on a hard drive - as Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format (PDF) files or Microsoft Office formats such as .doc, .xls, and .ppt. (Most accountants recommend saving records for seven years.)
Lose less stuff. Making your files digital makes them searchable. Need to know how much you charged the Hyatt for an outdoor event in August? Search by "Hyatt and August."
Enhance security. Because files are digital, they are easier to copy and backup onto external hard disks or USB sticks to be physically taken off site or transmitted via the Internet to an online backup service. If disaster strikes, your chances of recovering from digital files are better than fragile paper ones. Use passwords that combine letters, numbers and characters; have strict policies on data access; set a solid daily and weekly backup schedule and follow it religiously.
Keep it Digital
Going paperless won't matter much if you go it alone. You've got to convince employees to follow your lead. Share the benefits in savings and efficiency with them during a meeting and by e-mail (take advantage of the e-mail feature in the digital edition of Floral Management). Set a policy with staff not to print e-mails, Web sites or documents.
Make it easier to resist printing by investing in larger monitors. Most 20-inch LCDs cost $150 and will also cut your cut energy costs by about one third, compared to a CRT monitor. Check out Cheapstingybargains.com for options.
Paperless doesn't mean systemless. Rethink how you store, organize and access records. First, you'll need to standardize your electronic file formats. We suggest PDF and Microsoft Office formats.
To read PDFs, download the free software at www.adobe.com/reader. To create PDFs, you can buy Adobe Acrobat 9 for each computer at $299 or replace Microsoft office with the free Open Office (at Openoffice.org). This well-tested clone of Microsoft Office uses traditional formats, but has the built-in capability to save PDFs. Search online for "DeskPDF" or "CutePDF" for more free options.
Once you have a standard format, create a solid naming-convention for files, folders and e-mails. You can sort by year, client, type of work, etc. Programs such as Microsoft Outlook will create hierarchical folders. Just be sure to back up the .pst files (e-mails) and .pab file (your address book).
Upgrade Hardware
If you have one computer, buy RAM modules to "max out" the machine's memory, since PDFs hog this resource. You can install an additional hard drive to serve as data storage for all new electronic files and purchase an external USB hard drive to back it all up. Use Microsoft's built-in Backup utility to regularly backup your data to the external USB hard drive. A 1TB internal hard drive is about $130; the external version is $200.
For larger operations with net- worked computers, consider a central server with a redundant storage system in a RAID5 configuration or go with a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device. Or, try online backup services such as www.mozy.com or www.idrive.com.
The Less-Paper Machine
Now, let's tackle those old files and faxes still coming in. Canon, Lexmark, HP and Brother all manufacture multifunction or all-in-one office machines between $200 and $350 that help turn those physical files into electronic ones. Be sure your new computer has these features:
Duplex. This prints on both sides of the paper.
Scan to PDF. This feature can quickly reduce that entire file cabinet to PDFs. A machine that has a duplex document feeder to scan would be ideal.
Network. When scanning to PDF, you can opt to send it directly to your shared storage, NAS or as an e-mail address.
Laser cartridges are more cost- effective than ink jets.
Although you may invest a little in time and money up front, implementing less-paper strategies should pay for themselves the first year, then save you lots of money in the long run.
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