Note: It’s still not too late to take my “Best Practices 2011″ Survey. Participants will receive the final report, and (when published) my “enhanced eBook” Making Referrals Happen. If you have had experience with this or other equipment, your comments are welcome below.
Digitizing paper files and routine processes is so valuable that it has to be at the top of advisors’ lists on ways to be more productive
The Process
1) Set a goal
2) Buy or lease equipment
3) Run some tests
4) Personnel in place
5) Process documented
6) Staff trained
7) File preparation
8) Scanning
9) File naming
10) Secure disposal
11) Secure access and
12) Redundant backup
Set Goals
You have to break this project into pieces. We have client files, direct mail files, and seminar files. Plus we generate a lot paper for workbooks for our training classes. We’re going to start with the client files for the simple reason: We’re moving, and they take up the most space.
First objective: All client files scanned to a secure location, redundantly backed up, with access granted to those who need the data.
Due date: October 21.
In project planning, rule #1: Planning starts with the destination in mind.
We’ll plan and execute the other projects after we move.
Buy or Lease Equipment
We decided on the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500 Scanner. Our research was really simple. The daughter of one of our team members works at the Coca-Cola bottling plant within 50 yards of our office. She said every admin person there had one on their desk.
We bought a couple. These are awesome machines. I have some information on this scanner on my Paperless Resource Page.
Motto: When you find something that works, stop checking. Get the job done.
In doing a bit of online research, I read about people taking a year to get their files organized!! Not interested in that. Let’s get it done.
Run Some Tests
In order to know how many people to assign to the project, we needed two vital pieces of data we didn’t have.
1) How many files can one person prepare per hour?
2) How many files can one person scan per hour?
Based on initial tests, we think we can do this with two people on file prep, and two on scanners, although we might have to increase that to three each.
Let’s say roughly that’s $15K in staff pay to finish a massive project. In planning our new office, we were advised we needed 7 square feet per filing cabinet. That’s at least 420 square feet of space. Counting all the expense of office space, it would cost me $8,000 a year to store all this stuff. I break even in two years. Plus we can get rid of rollerblades.
This should get you started.
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This is the first in a series of articles, which are archived on a “Paperless Resource Page” on my website.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I trust you guys have a good plan for backing all of that stuff up? I remember you used to always talk about a manual backup carried offsite to a safe deposit box. I took that little speech to heart and have done that with all of the stuff I am responsible for backing up just for good measure. But my real backup is offsite in a secure data center. Have you guys converted to storing stuff “in the cloud” yet? If not, you should. Cheap….secure…..guaranteed. Don’t put a ton of effort into getting the paper electronic if you arent going to put some effort into insuring your investment with a good backup.
Brian–we use both cloud back up and tape backup rotated to the safe deposit box weekly. Relying only one one cloud company utter nonsense. What if they go bankrupt tomorrow? Reduncancy just makes sense.