Office Document Strategies Blog

 What does rolling your business copier (MFP) lease mean?  This is the practice of encouraging a lease holder to replace their copier or MFP with a new unit prior to the end of the current lease.  It is a common practice for some companies and can lead to significant additional cost for lessees.  

  Getting a new MFP?  Should you buy it or lease it?  There are as many thoughts on this topic as there are finance people in businesses.

 Businesses of all sizes can find postage machines or meters a useful tool.  Their primary benefit is to provide security of a costly resource, stamps. The also can make sure that you use your postage efficiently, only putting the amount on each envelope that is needed, without over posting.  Over posting even a few cents can lead to hundreds of dollars of unnecessary cost.

Interesting Yahoo Question posed the other day. What is confidential Paper Shredding? The common answer seemed to be -" Once a paper Document was shredded it is nearly impossible to reassemble."
Nearly impossible but doable with a lot of patience and tape-if the document was shredded with a strip cut shredder.   Depending on the width size of the strip cut- just like a jigsaw puzzle-if someone desperately wanted to - unlike Humpty Dumpty the document could be put back together again.
When purchasing a Shredder you need to know what is being shredded and just how confidential the data on the paper (or electronic media) is.  If it contains highly sensitive data- you need to get a Cross Cut Shredder- and the document will be shredded like confetti at a wedding. Cross cut shredders cut in different size "squares"- the smaller the "square" the higher the security value assigned to the shredder. 
You also need to know who is shredding the data. If you are using an in-house shredder- and most offices should have a Shredder- and a policy for what is to be shredded- and what paper can be safely placed in a recycle box.

I just came back from holiday.  Getting away from the normal daily activities gives you a chance to look at things in a different light once you return to the regular routine.  My first project back has been to finish up a document management system expansion redesign for a client project.

Colour printing is a constantly growing part of the printer market. The capabilities and the quality of colour laser printers continue to grow.  Ricoh has recently introduced a letter/legal colour laser that sets a new mark in one particular area.  The estimated operating costs for this new unit are as low as 3.8 cents (US) in colour and less than 1 cent in black and white.

File storage in the cloud is becoming a popular tool for many people and businesses.  There are many services which offer you free or low cost storage for video, pictures, and other digital data.  In addition there are many online backup systems available which permit you to store your critical data on remote servers as part of your backup strategy.  These can be very valuable and worthwhile tools and are not to be ignored.

I really never thought this could happen but courtesy of the author of the Death of the Copier Blog I am now not so sure.  He recently featured a presentation made to TED in September 2009 that kind of blew my mind.  Maybe a paperless document strategy is really possible.

  Converting a paper filing system into an electronic record system requires several steps and impacts the workflow of the office.  Here is a case in point.

Consumer and business buying patterns are changing as a direct result of access to the internet.  

A recent article in the Action Line column of the Hamilton Spectator outlined the problems experienced by a Hamilton area business who's phone number was mistakenly associated with another business from Brantford in the Google Maps listings.  The story talks about the frustration of trying to get this simple error corrected and the challenges it created.

The second part of the article outlines some interesting facts which show why the worldwide access to business information is so pervasive today.  Stats Canada reported 80 percent of Canadians 16 or older spent time online in 2009.