Konica Minolta’s magicolor printer line keeps expanding with some very strong models. The new 5650EN and 5670EN provide solid productivity for a large workgroup. More…

It’s not just the Fortune 1000 companies. Even small-to-midsize companies are in danger of a receiving a subpoena from almost any direction, with demands for a quick turnover of electronically stored information (ESI). More…

Eastman Kodak, long the victim of the collapse of the traditional film-based photography business, has been trying for years to build up its digital presence. More…

While navigating the electronic discovery rules put into effect in 2006 can still be murky, one thing is clear: More…

When businesses look into energy-saving practices, there’s one point they often miss. More…

Most IT managers have heard horror stories about tech staffers using their access privileges for illegal or unethical purposes. But that kind of behavior may be more widespread than you think. More…

Is nothing sacred? Where computer systems are concerned, it seems not. More…

If what this man says is true, IT may have to brace itself for a brand new user complaint. More…

A recent campaign by the federal government sends a clear message to all employers: Make sure your employment records are intact. More…

From AIIM 2009, Brian Dollard talks about the Oce PRISMA sync. More…

Almost any piece of paper that goes through your business may be a target for discovery in a legal suit — and it’s getting harder to figure out which seemingly routine papers you can safely toss. More…

The OKI Printing Solutions 9650 ledger-size printers have replaced the excellent C9600 family. They add more power, more memory and additional finishing options to those very good departmental color printers. More…

In this age of iPhones and other hip gadgets, HP hopes it can give the printer its own element of cool. More…

Do employees in your company use office computers to download music and video files? If so, they may be putting the organization at serious risk of data theft. More…

Toshiba recently announced a top-to-bottom restructuring of its black-and-white copier multifunctional line for the office. More…

These new models, the C730 series, are part of an overall upgrade in Lexmark’s whole printer and printer-multifunctional line with a comprehensive new design that offers both obvious and subtle improvements. More…

You know the scene in the spy movie. The hero finally gets into the room and opens the safe with the documents, whether the plans for the new weapon or the proof of the villain’s crimes. More…

With more and more workgroup printers, copiers, and multifunctionals on the office floor, most office workers now sit within a spitball’s throw of a noisy machine. More…

The CEO of an e-mail security firm recently dared hackers to break into his personal account. Here’s the lesson he learned the hard way. More…

The MX-B401 is Sharp’s new black-and-white high-speed (40ppm) office machine. While it has many of the features and some of the look of a copier-multifunctional, it also is like a printer-multifunctional in that it handles paper up to legal size, not ledger-size paper like most copier MFPs. More…

The worldwide demand for recycled paper keeps growing, slowed only by the current downturn. More…

Going green is white-hot in the industry these days. But in IT organizations, there’s little interest in cutting power consumption — even though technology is a major consumer of energy. More…

2. Get a search application

The second part, once you have searchable files, is to get a program that will help you retrieve them. You can link it into a high-end document management solution, of course. But before you take that step, you can do just fine with inexpensive software, such as Google Desktop.

Google’s search engine (as we’ve all experienced) is amazingly fast, and will allow you to find and bring up a list of relevant searchable PDF documents for any search term. It’s a familiar interface that every user can jump right on, and experienced Google users already know how to focus their searches. The best idea is to keep the searchable files on a server, under a specific file folder, and start adding files.

3. Rethink faxing

Let’s face it — faxing is almost a Stone Age technology in the age of digital transmission and scanning-to-e-mail. But faxes are still important parts of some businesses, thanks to tradition, comfort, inertia or whatever. For example, most pharmacies use fax to get prescriptions from doctor’s offices.

If you need to handle faxes, there are two good approaches. You can take the paper copies and scan them into PDF, as you would other paper documents, and send them by e-mail. Or you can get software (such as eFax) that assigns specific fax numbers to each user, intercepts incoming faxes, digitizes them, and e-mails them to the user. This approach can cut down on the problem of lost or misrouted faxes. Of course, it lets you send files on your PC directly to their fax machines. It also allows users who are not physically present in the office to receive (and send) faxes.

4. Combine analog and paper documents

In most companies, some information is in paper form only, but an increasing amount is in digital format. These may include Word files, Excel spreadsheets, e-mails, or a wide variety of other formats. These may reside on users’ desktops or on one of several servers, local or remote.

As a result, interactions with one client may include printed invoices and bills, paper waybills, signed contracts, a long email exchange, a few faxes with notes written on them and various digital proposals and reports.

So even after you have scanned in the papers, it may be difficult to find key documents that maybe had never been printed or were printed but lost. The task of searching through several desktop PCs and servers, for information in a number of file formats is daunting.

Fortunately, you can use the same software that converts scanned paper documents into searchable PDFs to convert a variety of digital files into the same format. Usually, this is accomplished using the Print command, and having it use a conversion driver rather than a driver for an actual printer. Most of us are used to doing this for making everyday PDF files.

Having all these documents at hand will make it easy to put together a report for management, for sales people, or for the client, a report that combines a variety of documents that trace the history of a set of transactions, whether the background on a specific order, a billing and payment history, or a progress report on a long-term project. Using today’s technology, it is easy to combine pages from a wide variety of sources into a single PDF file that can be delivered electronically or printed out as needed.

5. Gradually drive paper out of the process

There are several factors at work here. Today’s monitors are larger, making it easier to read a full page at one time. Younger workers especially have grown up expecting to complete most transactions online, even when the screen is no bigger than an iPhone or a Blackberry. Electronic signature technology and security keeps getting better. Finally, even the business world is changing, so that bid proposals, pricing quotes and confirmations are going more and more digital, so companies that want to win have to jump in fast — in many cases, there’s no time for printing, packing and FedExing. The need is for now.

Of course, these are basic steps. If and when you want a more elaborate system, you can work with high-level document management systems, production scanning, and more elaborate security and backup strategies. The best thing is that this approach, with searchable PDF, can be easily incorporated into any more elaborate system with no wasted effort.

Get information on eCopy Desktop here. There is a full function, trial version available if you want to experiment with it.

From Jacksonville, Florida comes the story of how an unauthorized city employee signed 48 copier leases and cost the city over $3 million to clean up the mess. More…

Electronic discovery rules have thrown a wrench into businesses’ document management practices — those that aren’t up-to-date could face big legal trouble. More…

It’s not news that many employees are ignoring IT security policies. But who’s doing it might surprise you. More…

Faced with cutbacks, many companies are turning to outsourcing providers for help with office services — often to beef up document management. More…

When the economy goes down, crime goes up — and that includes theft by employees of expensive office supplies. More…

The MFC-7340 is a new black-and-white MFP based on Brother’s proven architecture. This model offers straightforward but minimal features at $200. It offers a document feeder and fax capability along with a decent 21ppm speed for printing and copying. More…

Despite technological advances in information search tools, important documents are still hard to find at many companies. More…