[PCWorld]

Post your comments for Building the Paperless Office here

[treeder]

Another important piece for going paperless is being able to sign and get things signed online. This is one of the last things that really require paper, but esignature services like www.middlepost.com enable online signatures and the archiving of these important documents.

[Sanjiv]

to go paperless, one needs to have everyhting online: google docs, zoho, and edeskonline come to mind.

[juanantoniod]

I have a scanned image of my signature that can be inserted into documents prior to faxing or printing, so that covers electronic signatures.

[ABhejit]

Hi Joe,

yes I do feel that most of the professionals and organisations can benefit from your advice. In the software section you have mentioned about the getting right software, It would have been great if you would have also tested the Electronic signature software which embeds the signatures to the documents; which can be verified online making the offices completely paperless. I would really appreciate if you could also include such softwares in your articles

ABhijit

[klagman]

MightyFile is a searchable document solution which addresses many of the points in the article. The beauty of MightyFile is that it is a packaged solution which includes a scanner, hardware and software and works seamlessly out-of-the-box. This takes away all the effort of selecting, configuring, and integrating separate components. Take a look at the demo at http://www.youtube.c...h?v=AcsHJ7pl874
or go to
www.mightyfile.com

[tstapleton]

Klagman, Thanks for the plug :)
Joe: This is is a great article.
I would recommend always getting a scanner that does duplex in a single pass. Most documents are not duplex but scanning two sides on a simplex scanner is a total nuisance. It's really easy to get alternate pages upside down etc especially if you don't do it very often. If the process is not easy then it doesn't get done (and you end up sticking with paper).
I think treeder makes a great point about signatures. It's one of those areas where most people will print the document to sign it and then scan the result. Many attorneys are uncomfortable with simply dropping a signature image in the document unless the document is digitally signed. This is an area that most end-users are uncomfortable with. It's an unenviable task to try to explain to an end-user how to digitally sign a document and deal with certificates and I think most of them will print and scan until this process is simplified somewhat.