The Paperless Office

The purpose of this paper is to inform you on how to set-up a paperless office. The set-up will include the evaluation and planning of the paperless office. I will use an insurance office for my paper. I want to show you why insurance office should scan their documents and keep their files electronically instead of the old fashion paper file.
Evaluation:
This is the stage where you will look at your current resources such as your agency management system, hardware, duel monitors, and the type of scanning that you will what to do in your office. There are three options as to when items can be scanned: 1-When paper is received; 2- as the paper is worked, 3- and after the paper is worked.
For this paper we will only talk about Front-end scanning- this type of scanning is when all mail is scanned into the system in the mail room and distributed electronically to the Staff. Since the greatest benefit of Front-end scanning is that no mail can be over looked because it is being scanned as it is received by the agency in the mailroom. This will protect the agency from missing any items. It will also help the workflows of the agency because the items will be easier to process if they are already scanned to the staff.
Planning Stage:
The planning stage is when you look at the different software programs that can help your office to process the mail electronically, you want to make certain that the system you choose is ser friendly, easy to integrate into your management system, and easy for your employees to retrieve information from.
This is also the stage when you will set-up the time frame to take your entire office paperless. It is easier to take the office paperless if you start with one department at a time. The easy department from my experience to start with is the Personal Lines Department because most of their policies are usually received electronically through a download, so this department is usually almost paperless when you begin this process.
You will also want to get dual monitors for all of your Staffs this way they can run their agency management system on one monitor while they have the paperless system running in the other monitor. Studies have shown that the implantation of dual monitors alone can raise productivity by 30percent in most offices.[i]
Remember for change to be effective it must be complete. You must be committed to the change. If you believe that there is room to hedge, cheat, or otherwise hang on to the past, the change will not succeed. This is an important to teach to everyone in your office start in the planning stage teaching that change is a good thing and it will help the transition to the paperless system.
Scanning can help bring productivity up by eliminating the need for staff to leave their desk to access information. With a conservative estimate that every trip away from a desk results in a loss of seven (7) minutes due to inevitable small talk with peers, coffee refill, bathroom and/or smoke breaks, mailroom stop, and any of the other myriad of possible distractions, these trips add up quickly.[ii]
Implementation stage:
The first thing you should do in this stage is to teach your staff to think paperless. This will help them to learn to process their mail in the new paperless workflow system. You want to stress to them that they still have the paper it is just digital now. The best way to start your staff into thinking paperless is to not give them any paper copies. If they have to access the paperless system to retrieve their mail and to process it they will start to embrace the paperless thinking a lot quicker.
Another way to start your staff into thinking paperless is to stop buying them paperless calendars. In learning to use the electronic calendar such as Outlook, the staff will learn to utilize more of the paperless technology that they already have at their disposal. You can also make a shared office calendar, to post vacations, birthdays, important staff meeting and etc.
One of the most important thing you need to do in this stage is to decide who will be your point person for the office, this person will be in charge of training employees and will be there to assist with questions. This person should not only be your troubleshooter, they should also be the person to work out the workflows so that everyone on your staff use the same workflows to process their mail. One of the most important things you will teach your staff is to be consistent.
Go Live Stage:
After you have taken your staff live on the paperless system, make certain that you have bins that your scanning operator can put the mail in everyday after it has been scanned. The mail should be kept 60 days at first the shredded. You can revise the amount of days that you are going to keep the scanned mail after about six (6) months. Make certain that you put all the scanning guidelines into your office workflow manual, this way all of the staff will know all the guidelines for your new paperless way of thinking and working.
Auditing stage:
You should start to audit your staff after they have been working in the paperless system for about 30 days. Randomly pick accounts for each staff member to make certain that they understand the new way to process. You will also want to start running reports starting after the first week of all the incoming mail and what they have processed this way you can track to see if the system is helping your staff to work more efficiently. The reports will also help you to keep track of what staff members are able to complete all of their job duties and the ones who need additional help or training.
Feedback stage:
This will be an ongoing stage that will help you to refine your workflows based on staff feedback. This stage will help you to know what workflows have to be reworked so that the staff can process more efficiently. It will also help you to know if you need to refine your processes for any internal audits.

[i] The Paperless Office By: Robert E Dunn III page 15

[ii] The Paperless Office By: Robert E Dunn III page 18