Have you heard the term "Paperless Office" in your business and hoped that it would happen or perhaps heard the term and not understood exactly what it meant? The answer lies in what is described as imaging technology. Imagine, some day all of those file cabinets can become a thing of the past.

Electronic documents can be created manually, as in word processors or spreadsheets, or they can be scanned images of paper documents, like receipts. You typically store these documents on your own PC at home or perhaps on a network server at work.

The problem arises when, six months later, you or someone else needs to produce, in "hard copy" form, that specific document which now resides somewhere in electronic form. The real question now becomes: "how do I find it?"

Many different software packages will help organize your documents and make retrieval easier by the use of key words like author’s name, subject, or date filtering, or some other searchable attribute. Your software storage and retrieval software should include, at a minimum:

1. Separation by document type (examples below):
a. Human Resources
b. Customer Service
c. Job Packets
d. Accounts Payable
e. Accounts Receivable

2. Indexes of documents as needed for the different types:
a. Employee SSN
b. Customer Name, number
c. Job number
d. Invoice Number, date etc.

All user interfaces in your storage and retrieval software should be modifiable by the administrator so that as new areas are addressed, they can be added or changed. Keep the master plan as simple as possible but detailed enough to find what is necessary.

Remember, although it is easy to find what you did yesterday, it is harder to find what someone else did yesterday. Only with careful planning will you find what someone else did two years ago before leaving the company.

Due to the complex nature of these software tools, understanding the proper setup and use of them is critical. Review the documentation of the storage and retrieval software to make sure you, and/or your co-workers, agree on the proper level of "techno-babble." In other words, make sure it is useable.

Also included with a top-line document retrieval and storage system should be the ability to convert documents from one format to another so that the storage can be standardized to the greatest extent.

Another of the included features which should be part of the package is electronic digital signature. This feature allows a document which has been stored electronically to be introduced as legal evidence should that become necessary.

Document storage and retrieval systems really fit well into the computer world and you are going to see more and more of these systems introduced. Not all are user-friendly, so before you plunk down the hard earned cash be sure you know and understand the systems.

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