Office Document Strategies Blog

For many of us it is hard to imagine that we are now into the third decade of the 'New" century.  If your career started prior to 2000 a lot of your ideas, systems and processes mentally were probably shaped by a very different way of doing things than we now experience.  For those who only know the world of the 21st century the contrasts are not as great but even for them much has changed in the last 20 years.

Most businesses operate with the need for multiple people to participate in many areas of the operation and to share documents, data and procedures.  In many offices the tool for sharing info and documents is email. We are all familiar with long email trails where notes or documents get circulated, commented on and sent on to others or worse still replied to "all". 

One of the processes that is commonly used in the assembly and production of court ready documents is called Bates Stamping or Bates Numbering.

We all know that traditional retail industries have changed significantly due to the digitization of commerce.  While there are still more dollars changing hands in physical stores than online the volume of digital transactions have mushroomed exponentially and the interaction at physical stores has changed as well.

Anyone who spends any time at all listening to what happens in the technology and retail fields will know by now that Amazon experienced intermittent outages with the launch of their 2018 Prime Day on Monday afternoon this week.  For anyone who is not up to what is happening at the world's most aggressive online retailer each year they launch a roughly 36 hour promotion day which makes Black Friday in the US and Boxing Day in Canada look tiny.  Estimates are that over 3.4 billion dollars in sales will be produced this year on Prime Day in spite of the glitches which occurred. 

Why is it in a world where thousands of transactions are handled every minute using the tap of a credit card on a terminal many businesses still cling to manual paper driven processes?  Express Pay speeds up sales processes for vendors and purchasers.

Last week the Pan Am Games got started in Southern Ontario including Toronto, Milton, Hamilton, St. Catharines and Welland.  As a precursor to the the games starting IT World Canada published an interesting slide show featuring innovations in technology that have affected various sports.  These first time uses have morfed into regular part of the sports shown.  

One of the features of the slide show included what components of computer technology the games require.  How about 2400 workstations (desktops and laptops), 2300 monitors, 50 servers and  storage solutions spread across the 40 venues?  That's is a pretty massive collection of tools which are assembled just to keep a short but big event running.

What other things are affected by the Pan Am?  How about the drivers who now have to deal with more and less accessible HOV lanes?  Will the GPS technology that provides real time traffic data to users help them get to work or to event parking be a help?  This is something that gets taken for granted but the technology behind it is pretty impressive.  Google offers similar capability through Google Maps for cell phones.  The system of highway cameras run by MTO will also help. Of course there is also the temporary camera system being used to police the busiest highways to ensure people are following the rules as well.  Watch for the solar panels and the orange boxes along the HOV routes.

Employers are being encouraged to provide flexible work rules so that employees are not forced to be on the roads at the same time as Pan Am fans.  Flexible starting times, closing times and the ability for people to work from home are some of the steps being taken. Each of these has a technology component (information sharing systems, remote computer access, email, chat) that can help facilitate activity and keep people connected even if not in the office at the same time.

Of course public transit is a big part of dealing with the potential crowd issues and we all know that schedules, system operations and consumer information require big technology components to make it possible to handle the volumes of users.  There is a tool available called Triplinx that can help you plan public transit use.

Then there is the ticket process.  Most of those who will attend the many events and venues for the Pan Am Games will have accessed some information site to obtain information, buy tickets or get directions to their chosen sport.  Technology drives the ticket process from beginning to end.

Most of us take the underlying technology that helps our modern society to function for granted.  When major, short term impacts are created like the Pan Am events we can definitely be thankful that it is all there and functioning (usually very reliably) in order to keep our daily activities flowing inspite of the potential increases in volume of people moving.

Enjoy the games.

Lee K

Photo Credit:  Pan Am Games Toronto 2015

One of the biggest issues that many companies deal with when they consider cloud data security is becoming comfortable that their information will be secure and not subject to unauthorized access. 

Every once in awhile an article comes across your desk that really capsules a challenging topic for IT operations.  This happened this week when I came across a listing for a recent publication from Europe which summarizes the security benefits and risks that come with cloud computing.  
Even better this publication is targeted directly at SMEs, (Small and Medium sized enterprises).

Over the past fifteen years a revolution has occured in the printing industry.  I can remember when the typical office copier was an analog device with super advanced features like the ability to expand an image to a larger size.