Spring is fast approaching, and now is a perfect time to finally tackle your office’s paper clutter. If your company hasn’t already been digitizing incoming paper, you probably have an ever-growing filing cabinet full of possibly useless, hard-to-access files. Arm yourself with a scanner, a document management system, and a big mug of coffee, and use these tips to get started.
Digitizing Your Office Files
Digitizing is an essential part of any office today since paper slows down productivity and is inefficient and even insecure. With the right tools, digitizing doesn’t have to be a chore, and once you have a system in place, it’s easy to keep things moving quickly.
Before beginning, choose three bins to organize your papers into. The first (and biggest) bin will be your recycling: these papers are old junk mail, unnecessary records, and other files that aren’t sensitive and don’t need to be kept or shredded. The second bin will hold all sensitive but outdated material, such as bank or investment statements, proprietary information, and anything with employee personal data on it. Finally, your smallest pile will be your digitize pile. You’ll turn these papers into digital files and organize them for easy access.
If you’re struggling to decide which bin a file goes into, consider these questions:
- What specific circumstance could the company need this information in (rather than a vague idea that we might need this later!)
- If someone in the company needed this information, could they get it elsewhere (like on the Internet)?
- Is this information up-to-date or recent?
- Is this information worth the time it will take to file?
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Of course, work within your company policies and industry regulations to answer these questions. For more information about document management, contact us.
