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Businesses Hardware

Hardware for a Paperless Business? 53

Posted by Cliff from the less-need-for-dead-trees-is-a-good-thing dept.
Wescotte asks: "While the priority of moving paperless at my company is very low I've made it my personal mission to get rid of as much paper as I can. Creating a basic electronic form and approval system for our internal documents is a big job but I feel the largest hurdle will be creating a system in which the average employee can scan in additional documents to attach to these forms. For example am employee scanning in all receipts to attach to an expense report. Ideally I would like to find a piece of hardware that allows for print/copy/scan, and would allow for some personal identification by swiping our employee id card or even finger print identification. Does such a product exist and nearly compete price wise with the Xerox products?" Is anyone aware of a system or hardware additions that could streamline this process, and provide centralized document storage for document scans?
"We currently have quite a few Xerox DocuCentre devices, located all over the building, that are accessible by all employees and most have the ability to scan to TIFF/PDF. Personal gripes about little software glitches in the scanning process aside, the real problem is putting these image scans into a central location yet easily identifiable by the employee after the scan.

Our Xerox machines allow us to create templates on each machine. This allows the user to select the destination of where the image should be stored. It would be ideal to store a template per employee so they would have their own folder of stored images. However, maintaining such a list would be far too large of an undertaking since each individual machine would have to have it's own list. Plus, navigating by employee name would be a chore because of the size of the company."
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Hardware for a Paperless Business? More

Hardware for a Paperless Business?

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  • program a serial card reader to accept the employee ID cards and send to the printer the directory to save the scan to. The card reader can even be updated via ethernet.

  • Going at this from the wrong angle (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 07, 2005 @11:36PM (#13744789)
    Eliminating paperwork to save money or the environment is not done by transforming paperwork into harddrive space.

    Here's what you do: take the most common form you fill out and pass around or turn in or whatever, like this hypothetical expense sheet. Find the person who receives and files that form. Fire them. Tell everyone else you better never see one of those forms again or they're gone too.

    If any transfer of paper to electronic records happens, it will be because there was a real need for the information transfer taking place. For example, they may give out company credit cards and handle expenses that way.

    By attempting to change the bullshit into electronic bullshit, you are just becoming part of the problem.

    • Re:Going at this from the wrong angle (Score:4, Insightful)

      by toddbu ( 748790 ) on Friday October 07, 2005 @11:46PM (#13744825)
      I'm in total agreement with this. I've seldom ever seen a paper to electronic system work well. Plus there are a lot of things companies do today that's no longer required. For example, there are many smaller receipts that no longer need to be kept. If I remember right (and I'm not a tax accountant, so go talk to yours), I think that receipts under $75 are no longer required in an audit. I don't know about your company, but in most companies this means that 50%-75% of receipts don't need to be kept. Of the remaining receipts, you may want to revist the way that you handle expense reports. If I remember right, Amex will give you copies of everything at year-end that you just stuff in a folder. If you're smart, you can get rid of virtually all receipts.

      The only caveat is that businesses are usually very reluctant to change business processes, so make absolutely sure that you have buy-off from the bean counters before approaching the management. Document the cost of handling all that paper, and you may find yourself with a new hardware budget to simplify the transition.

      • If I remember right (and I'm not a tax accountant, so go talk to yours), I think that receipts under $75 are no longer required in an audit. I don't know about your company, but in most companies this means that 50%-75% of receipts don't need to be kept.

        It's really an issue of materiality. If you're a multi-million dollar software company, then you probably don't need to keep a receipt every time you buy a dozen bagels (although you might have to if you buy a dozen bagels every day). If you're a tiny o

      • I've seldom ever seen a paper to electronic system work well.

        Sure there are. Simple things, like vacation request forms. Previously, we had a 3-part form to be filled out. Assuming your request is approved, 1 copy gets forwarded/faxed to HR (in another city), 1 to your supv, and 1 back to you. Lots of paper moving around to get lost. And hard to find out exactly how many days you (or your division) have taken this year, and for what.

        Replace that with a web- or Outlook forms-based solution. Always backed up

        • I think you are talking about something else... when the parent said "a paper to electronic system", that indicated to me paper originals that then become part of a digital use/transfer (such as paper receipts transferred in via scanning).

          The vacation request form example that you gave is fundamentally different, since you control the original, and in that case it never exists in the digital domain. If the form was sitting in the supply room, you filled it out, then scanned it in, then that would be a more
    • If you pick the right sort of paper to use, you might actually be improving the environment. Because you will be taking carbon out of the air.

      The trouble with most sorts of paper is that the process of processing them produces lots of toxic chemicals.
  • buy a cheap serial card reader, plugged into a sff linux system, or embedded if possible (soekris would fit this). use ldap (possibly with activedirectory if a windows shop) or nis if you must to keep track of user directories. have the linux box poll the xerox's incoming directory and move the next file to appear. downside of this is you have to swipe your card every time you scan a page, but with some ingenuity you can get around this. move the incoming documents to ~bobsdir/scanned_documents/, and/or sen
    • I've thought about doing something similar but it seems to have it's flaws.

      The best method I could come up with is this. Each machine had a temp folder where it stores all scanned images before they are moved to the user folders. The image files are moved based on file creation timestamp. The user swipes their id card and a program notes who the user is, what machine they swiped their card on. This data stays valid until another user swipes their card. This will allow all images created after the swip to mo

  • Give Up Now (Score:5, Insightful)

    by coaxial ( 28297 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @12:12AM (#13744921) Homepage
    You're trying to do the impossible. For at least 30 years, people have adovcated the "paperless office." It has reached a mythic status. It's just that: a myth. People always want to print. Hard copies allow annotations. Forms do not. Paper can be changed on the fly. Forms can not. Paper is portable. Forms are not. Even with laptops, you're still tied to the laptop. Paper can be folded up, and carried in pockets. Paper is collaborative. Computers aren't. Only one person can use a terminal. There's no rapid interaction among the group. That's why meetings and phone calls are still used even though email is practically ubiquitous.

    Anyone that advocates rigid computer forms over flexible paper, doesn't understand how paper is used in society. I could go on and on, but there's no need. An entire book [mit.edu] has already been written about this.

    And before you anyone cries "luddite," the book was written by a cognitive psycologist at Hewlett-Packard, and a senior Microsoft researcher in interactive systems. Hardly luddites, and arguably an ironic position for them to take given their employment.

    • you didn't exactly state at all why it would be stupid to try to be paperless on certain things - and why it would suck to have the receipts scanned and attached to the electronical requests etc...

      I don't think that he is trying to replace sketch paper or post-it notes, there's a lot of things usually that could be done via computer systems faster and easier than via using paper forms. It's a lot handier to manage an account directly through a program usually than it would be to keep it on paper, usually we
      • I did some work with a company where everything that was possible to be paperless was. This wasn't to cut out the paper, it was to increase efficiency. The whole lot was a combination of web forms with notifications through email, and an approve function on a web site.

        There was still a lot of paperwork that floated around the place, and a number of times, there was dual processes, one for paper and one for electronic.

        All files of Travel and Expenditure were electronic, and then you printed out the result, a
        • Yes, that is exactly what I'm trying to do. Almost all our forms are simply created from a template in excel, printed out only to be reented by somebody in data entry. It really blows my mind how such a procedure ever was implimented.

          Did you guys buy of this software or was it pretty much all custom written web based apps?
    • an in-office irc server would be kind of neat

      or something like it...

      they've tried to make online annotation methods collaborative with groupboards and the like, although on the whole i find that computers are clumsy for operating on most things other than typeable text (and maybe some simple image stuff)

    • Re:Give Up Now (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      agree with parent.

      kpmg spent alot of money on this but not to do the impossible, to eliminate paper, but to achieve an admirable useful goal. duplicating and recording all transactions the company undertakes and archiving it digitally and instantly searchable, an endeavor bolstered, in part, by the enron/worldcom and arthur andersen debacle. its taken billions and many man years and its still difficult and not yet finished.

      disclaimer: this is all hearsay from a random kpmg IT consultant here in the uk.

    • Hard copies allow annotations. Forms do not. Paper can be changed on the fly. Forms can not. Paper is portable. Forms are not.

      For internal purposes, most of this could be resolved using tablet PCs. It'd be quite expensive for every employee to have 2 or 3 tablet PCs, but not impossible.

      Paper can be folded up, and carried in pockets.

      A USB pendrive or whatever they're called can be carried in pockets.

      Paper is collaborative. Computers aren't.

      You've gotta be joking on this one. Computers have much

      • 1. Tablet PCs aren't really ready for prime time. They're big. They're bulky. They have a limited battery. Interaction is clumsy. And they're expensive. Compare to paper which is thin. Easily distributable. (You can even effectively duplicate paper sometimes by tearing it in half.) Thin and light weight. Can be read on the scale of hundreds of years. Has a natural interaction, and very inexpensive for centuries. (As seen by the saying, "Not even worth the paper it's printed on.")

        2. Yeah pen driv
        • Tablet PCs aren't really ready for prime time. They're big. They're bulky. They have a limited battery. Interaction is clumsy. And they're expensive.

          Look at PDA's, their cheep (Yeah pen drives fit in a pocket, but you can't access them everywhere.

          Umm.. PDA's again?

          Have you ever tried to mark up revisions in a document? It's not that easy. Doesn't your software do that for you automatically? If not switch to MS Office of wait for OpenOffice to implement document sharing.

          When was the last time you were expl
          • PDAs
            PDAs are expensive. A Palm Tungsteon costs at least $150. A piece of paper (assuming $4 for a ream) costs $0.008, that's less than a penny each. Have you ever given a way a PDA? I don't think so.

            No USB drives aren't accessable anywhere, because they require you to bring your PDA. And not all PDAs will work. You need a PDA that has female USB-A port, as opposed to the much more common in portable, male USB-A port, or even mini male port. Also you need a PDA with software that is compatable with t
            • You need a PDA that has female USB-A port, as opposed to the much more common in portable, male USB-A port, or even mini male port.

              Well, that's one of the problems with USB, but there are plenty of converters and cables with different USB ports on the end. I've never had problems connecting laptops to a network (even if that meant using a serial lead and slip/PCAnywhere)

              you need a PDA with software that is compatible with the file you're trying to read. If it's not, then you're screwed. To some extent, but

    • the only time in history that there has been a paperless office is when we still wrote everything on clay tablets.

      seriously -- we tried this at my previous employer with some fancy stuff from Ricoh (scanner, fax, print, copy and more tied to an ID card system. slick stuff, but i dont remember the name of the software package that went with it) and although we did cut on paper usage, there was still paper everwhere. the auditors for some reason _like_ paper.....

  • Scan reciepts? Are you nuts? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Julian Morrison ( 5575 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @01:10AM (#13745090)
    Confucius say: man who accept JPEG as reciept, soon find all office computer have "gimp" installed.
    • Confucius say: man who accept JPEG as reciept, soon find all office computer have "gimp" installed

      Scanning the receipts would simply be for filing puproses AFTER the original form is approved and processed.
  • Such a system can be put together using commodity hardware and open source software. It would be more customizable, longer-lived, and more affordable than anything from the "big name" solutions providers. With a little integration, it could be quite low-maintenance as well.

    I've offered to do it for several years now for a few clients. Yet, none of them are large enough to pay "Xerox" prices or to justify the up-front costs by ordering more than a couple of systems. Also, it's difficult to find clients t
    • You should try putting together your own off the shelf system. It sounds like a good idea to me. If you could implement the most common applications for a small-medium company in an easy to setup, plug it in and go system, you might be able to do it.

      I've heard a lot of ideas for computer based products, but honestly, this sounds like a good one. Also, think about a particular market (law offices, medical offices, etc.). My uncle's medical practice spends a fortune on applications like this from large

  • It Won't Work (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ed Almos ( 584864 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @08:46AM (#13746028)
    Let me save you the time and the money, it won't work. Three years ago my boss decided that the paperless office was the way to go and we spent a fortune on hardware.

    1) Users complained about the extra work scanning incoming mail and invoices into the document management system.

    2) Users still printed out paper copies of documents so that they could read them.

    3) Despite a fortune spent on consultants auditors picked multiple holes in our system and almost refused to sign over the year-end accounts.

    I forget who said it but the paperless office is about as likely as the paperless toilet, get used to it.

    Ed Almos

    • Users complained about the extra work scanning incoming mail and invoices into the document management system.

      What we need is for every office to have a robotic set of hands. But in the mean time, there should really only be one (or a few) manual laborers complaining about scanning in documents. Everyone else should have their documents already scanned in.

      Users still printed out paper copies of documents so that they could read them.

      I have to admit that this one takes a lot of money to resolve. Du

    • I forget who said it but the paperless office is about as likely as the paperless toilet, get used to it.

      If you ever visit some parts of the world, you are going to have a big surprise [wikipedia.org]...

    • That's your problem, had any of you consultants actually worked in, with or created a paperless office before?

      I thought not, come back an say it's impossible when your not dealing with idiots.

      If I were designing a 'paperless office' I would keep information given to me by other companies in it's original format unless there was a really good reason for scanning it in. I would also try to get the companies I dealt with to issue electronic invoices etc...

      The only reason people were printing out documents to r
    • I forget who said it but the paperless office is about as likely as the paperless toilet, get used to it.

      Apparently this guy's never used this [whatchamissin.com]

  • Here you go... (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This [canon.com] system is similar to the Xerox while offering what you want. You combine the Canon with this [ecopy.com] desktop software to manage the scanning and this [worldox.com] makes it all searchable and stuff. Talk to your Canon rep about a card reader for access control and you're done.

    Good luck.
  • Sends the scans as PDF to the e-mail address chosen, via SMTP.
    • Right now we have the ability to store images to any folder on the network (that is writable), FTP or via email. However having a large number of usings it's not exactly easy to select where you want them to go. Each location must be typed in via touchpad.. Entering an email address just takes too long
      • The digital sender has autocomplete and you can specify short names for common email addresses. There's no reason to enter the whole address.
    • Consider using DJVU instead of PDF for scanned documents. You'll get much better size and much faster rendering. It makes a huge difference for me with my relatively small number of documents compared to an office.

  • Stapler (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anne_Nonymous ( 313852 ) on Saturday October 08, 2005 @11:05AM (#13746451) Homepage Journal
    >> I've made it my personal mission to get rid of as much paper as I can.

    You just want an excuse to take away my stapler, don't you?
  • Heh, i remember when that term was first coined, and then promptly printed and posted on the office bulletin board.
  • "You will see a paperless bathroom before a paperless office."

    In the several years since he said that, I think our paper usage has been increasing significantly.

  • Don't try to go "all the way"... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cr0sh ( 43134 ) on Monday October 10, 2005 @12:37PM (#13757450) Homepage
    As others have noted, this is an impossible task, simply because the technology isn't there yet (if we had something like e-ink "paper" coupled with a touch-sensitive layer to simulate paper with electronic notation - a tablet like this that was very inexpensive - heck, still probably wouldn't be good enough), plus dealing with all the incoming paper will be impossible.

    At the last company I worked for, I was the lead developer of an in-house developed CRM and problem tracking system. Most people loved the system - it was fast, it was convenient, it handled certain billing aspects, had reporting on critical information, the problem tracking software was fairly nice (we had several clients ask if we were selling it - we weren't). Even so, people couldn't let go of the paper on the problem tracking system. A job would come in, it would be entered, and then printed out, then "passed around".

    This wasn't necessary, though - the job could be "transferred" (with email notification to both parties and the client) between parties working on it, all time would be entered on the job, with a full history of who did what when. We allowed for "annotations" to the job, you could add "attachments" to the job (basically any file you had on your personal workstation or on the network) - which would "follow" the job around. Even so, people insisted on putting notes on the paper - and invariably, this would cause problems...

    Every day, you would get an email or hear someone say "Has anyone seen job #xyz? I gave it to Bob yesterday, but he doesn't have it, he can't find it", etc. I used to wonder to myself "Duh, if you had left it completely electronic, this wouldn't be an issue" - I even on a number of occasions asked people why they did this - managers, programmers, others who worked with the job - to see if I could come up with an electronic solution...

    Annotations were one thing, which got added in short order - basically as an attachment that could be "quick entered" - click the "Add Note" button, and a text editor would be openned which when the "save" button was clicked, would tack on the note as an attachment. This got used quite a bit, but things were still being passed around. A bit of discussion revealed that what they really were having problems with were screen prints faxed or emailed after the job was created. These were printed out, and stapled or clipped to the paper job as it was passed around. Sometimes, this stuff got unclipped, lost, thrown away - it was a nightmare to track. So we tried to come up with a solution. We created "scanning stations".

    These were two machines (in a trial run) set up with cheapo Visioneer scanners (actually, they were pretty nice scanners), with a very simple desktop - the user would log-in with the scanning station login/password, the desktop had a single icon, which read "scan attachment". Clicking on this icon the user would launch a simple application which allowed them to log into the job tracking system (so it knew who scanned the attachment), select the job number to attach the scan to, then put the page on the scanner and click "scan" - once the scan was complete, the image would be attached to the job as an attachment, and they could log out, or scan another document.

    We had plans and ideas of moving the "scanning" to the client end - so that they could log into our website, enter the job number, upload the image, and have it "auto-attach" to the job. We had ideas of using a fax server to automate the attachment of fax scans to the jobs (using OCR for Forms to detect a "written in" job number on the fax cover sheet or something). We even had an idea of hooking the phone system up so that a client could call in a problem, enter the job number in (or create a new job), speak the problem into the phone, capture the WAV file, create an MP3, and attach that to the job (voice clip attachment).

    Even so - even if we had implemented all of that (I don't know of a solution that even does any of that last part - maybe Peoplesoft or something) - I still think people would have passed around paper...

  • You'll never be 100% paperless. We've been pushing paperless for 3 years now, and we've made awesome progress. Anyone that tells you its ridiculous or impossible has either never tried it OR maybe their line of business wouldn't benifit from it. For us it is a huge improvement because we don't have to ship paperwork around the office (not to mention the nation) and the amount of things getting lost is almost down to zero.

    Aside from that, I'll give you some advice that we've learned from doing this. If you

    • Yes, our Xerox machines have the ability to send the TIFF (or PDF) files via FTP. You have the option ot overwrite, abort if file/folder exists, or rename. Now with a PDf it just creates file.pdf but with TIFFs it creates a folder of the name you specify and puts all the TIFFs in it with a text file containing a list of all the presets the user selected during the scanning process.

      The problem I can't seem to get past is determing where to store the files. If we have a large public folder where all scans go
      • Use SQL to index the metadata (info from the text file) and lock down the storage (some kind of NAS is easy) so its anything *but* public. This lets you easily manipulate categorization and security of the documents too.

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