What kinds of software do you need to move towards a paperless office? For that matter, how do you move to a paperless office? This article attempts to answer the latter question first.

Moving to a Paperless Office

First, engage in a reality check. You cannot really have a completely paperless office, considering people's preference to do certain kinds of work on paper and the legal implications of eliminating paper. For example, some courts may not accept digital documents as acceptable evidence.

What you can do is to minimize the use of paper. This has several benefits including speeding up business processes, improving the security of documents, and reducing the heavy costs incidental to storing large volumes of paper documents.

So how do you minimize paper documents? The following are some measures you can take:

• Scan all paper documents and OCR and index them into the electronic workflow. You can then shred most of the paper documents, provided systems are in place to authenticate the digital documents.


• Record data online directly into the system instead of recording them on paper and then transferring to the computer. Using POS (point-of-sale) terminals and handheld devices in the field are examples of ways you can do this.


• Automate data recording through the use of electronic sensors, such as barcode readers, production line counters, and instruments for measuring temperatures etc. The data captured can also be transmitted to the main system automatically.


• Integrate vendor and customer systems by providing interfaces that allow purchase and sales transactions to take place online, instead of through paper documents.


• Implement a content management system that accepts data from geographically spread-out offices and also provides access to the content from all these offices. Information can then be accessed online from anywhere with an Internet connection.


• Implement systems and practices that will authenticate the digital documents in a manner acceptable to courts of law, so that you can shred most of the paper documents after scanning.

Paperless Office Software Needed to Accomplish the Above

Various equipment mentioned above, such as scanners, POS terminals, handheld devices, and electronic sensors are handled by relevant software that controls their operations. The equipment by themselves can do little. These software packages come with differing capabilities and you have to select those with the capabilities that you need.

The other software you need include:

• OCR (optical character recognition) software to convert the images of text characters in the scanned documents into computer readable formats such as ASCII


• Search-engine software that indexes and helps retrieve documents


• SCM (supply chain management) and CRM (customer relationship management) software that provide interfaces with supplier and customer systems, and automates transactions


• Content management system that can provide a single interface to all the content from globally spread-out locations


• Control and audit systems that provide audit trails and otherwise help authenticate all digital documents

It's the package of specific software tools above that constitutes paperless office software.

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About Author: Ademero, Inc. develops paperless office software. Visit their website devoted to paperless office software . Browse the resources section which includes the largest collection of posts from real users reviewing all of the most popular document management system available.