February 23, 2005

Digitally Manage Paper Documents and Be More Productive

There are many industries, that are using paper less and less. Most of the work is 100% digitized with hardly any paper generated either in the office or between companies.

However there are MANY industries, medical, legal, construction, real estate and more where the intensity of paper continues to spiral. For these companies, every bit of paper they touch means they are losing time, losing money and overall not being as efficient as they could be.

I recently talked to Andrew Bailey, President and James True, Vice President, Marketing and Business Development of Cabinet NG a company that provides document management solutions specifically designed for small-medium sized businesses.

Their technology is impressive and especially their new release of Cabinet NG Books 2.0 a new release of their QuickBooks integration software. But what is most impressive is their network of partners they have and are building to provide a 360 degree solution for their customers.

Cabinet NG has three solutions - their flagship solution of managing paper documents, which we'll talk about in depth below; integration with QuickBooks and tools for electronic form creation.

Jim and Andrew repeatedly told me their mission is to cut paper off at the source.

Cabinet NG's solution works with scanned and/or faxed documents - this means that when someone faxes your office that 15 page contract you don't even have to physically receive the paper but can have it automatically routed to your document storage server for storage or further action. Of course, documents that are already digitized can be seamlessly integrated into Cabinet NG.

The power of Cabinet NG is that its not all about simply STORING documents but managing them. Once a document is stored in Cabinet NG it can be integrated into your business processes and be routed to users for action, approval, signing, etc; it can be integrated into your email or messaging platform; and a big feature is that you can create electronic forms that will automatically come pre-populated with key information.

Imagine you're a contractor for housing developers and you get dozens of sheets of paper per project. By turning your business into a paper-less environment you can continue to receive the documents by fax (or messenger, etc) but route them into a document management solution. Upon being digitized the documents could then be stored into folders you designate. Maybe each contract must be signed by 2 other partners. Imagine having forms that could be electronically routed to each partner - be they in the office or in another state with access to email only - and digitally signed. There are so many benefits - saving space; not losing documents; enabling multiple staff to work on and see one document (no need to make copies);

The possibilities are endless.

One Cabinet NG customer, a medical clinic, freed up enough space by digitizing their documents to add three exam rooms and three doctors. Plus reducing paper mishandling errors.

I'd encourage you to analyze your business. Is it paper intensive? Could you be more efficient? A document management solution is something you should consider. Take a special look at Cabinet NG as their product line is MADE for small-medium sized businesses and they have partners that can provide you with a complete solution.

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