Yeah, sure: the 'almost' paperless office.

If there's a Holy Grail in office-related technology, it has to be "The Paperless Office." Analysts and technologists have been bemoaning the sheer volume of paper that most offices are awash in, as well as promising relief "almost any day now."

That "almost any day" has stretched into decades. Computers were supposed to end the flood of paper, instead, for many, they have increased it.

The good news is that for the most part, the technology for a paperless office already exists, and is affordable. What's holding everything up? To a large part, it's simple human nature and inertia. We've all started out being dependent on paper, and just don't want to let go of our security blanket.

That's changing as well. During the past several years, many banks stopped returning the paper copies of your checks, instead simply listing the checks in the statement, and offering to supply an image of the front and back of the check should you need it to prove that you've made a payment.

This approach has met with mixed enthusiasm--banks love the idea and many customers hate it. As of last October, though, it's now the law. Banks can electronically capture the check's image and not have to physically move paper through the clearing process.

If you think about it, some of the transactions that you initiate are already paperless. For example, when you order a product over the Internet, you simply provide a credit card number. The amount is charged to your card, and if you pay the credit card balance by direct payment out of your checking account, no paper changes hands. These kinds of transactions are common, and becoming even more so from day to day.

Why go paperless?

To be honest, the totally paperless office might be an elusive goal. Not only are people creatures of habit, but some paper, such as deposit slips, past tax returns, and similar documents, may need to be retained for legal purposes. Even if your accountant files your organization's information returns electronically, how comfortable do you feel storing away your copy on CD?

Implementing a paperless office, at least to some extent, isn't even all that difficult, but it does take some thought and planning. The first step is to perform a "systems analysis" of your office and its procedures. This is something that you should be doing every once in a while, even if you aren't anticipating instituting a major change. It consists of examining the paper and work flow through the office. Depending on the degree to which you carry it, this analysis can be a major undertaking, or a much less laborious project.

What you really want to do is discover where documents come into the office, who in your office handles each document during its life and what each does to or with the document, and where the document ultimately winds up.

This document flow can be easily diagrammed on a large piece of posterboard. You will need to prepare a similar flow diagram for each type of document you are considering converting into electronic format. The purpose of this analysis is two-fold.

First, you want to see if and how this document gets modified or marked-up during its passage through your office. Then, you need to determine if there is a valid reason why the document can not be converted and manipulated in an electronic form.

Once you've determined which documents can be converted into electronic analogs, and which need to remain as physical paper, you can start deciding how to implement the process. This consists of making decisions about both the hardware and the software for your paperless office.

The first decision that most offices will make is what electronic format will be used.

The two most popular electronic formats used in the industry are RTF (rich text format), which can be read and written to by most word processors, and pdf (portable document format), invented by Adobe Systems. PDF is a very efficient way to store documents which have a graphic component, as it captures an accurate image of a page.

The problem with pdf is that unless the application that creates the pdf file specifically permits it, the document created as a pdf cannot be modified. With many documents used in an office environment, you'll want or need the ability to perform markups, which will require you to purchase more expensive software.

Adobe Acrobat, now up to version 7, is the original (and premier) application for dealing with pdf files. The Acrobat Reader is free, which gives almost everyone with a PC the ability to examine the content of a pdf file. To create an editable or modifiable pdf file, you'll need Adobe Acrobat Standard. This edition starts at $299, but not every staff member in your office needs to have the full Standard Edition.

Files created in pdf format with Acrobat Standard can be marked up or have electronic "sticky notes" attached using the free Acrobat Reader 7.

Having an application that creates markable pdf files is only part of the software solution, though. Actually managing the documents after they have been converted into electronic format is the other part of the necessary solution.

This is accomplished by document management software. This type of application creates a virtual filing cabinet, allowing you to "store" electronic documents in virtual file drawers so they can be easily retrieved when necessary. Document management applications also serve as the interface between the scanning hardware and different software destinations including the aforementioned pdf creation or OCR (optical character recognition) software that turns the image of a document into a word processing file that can be read and edited in a word processor.

Document management software cost span the gamut from about $100 to tens of thousands of dollars. With this great a disparity in cost, you'd be very pleasantly surprised with how much functionality you can achieve at the low end of the cost spectrum.

At $79, Presto! PageManager 6 (www.newsoftinc.com) offers one of the least expensive document management applications available. Even at this low price, you can scan documents into collections which can be searched, perform OCR to turn scanned documents into word processing files, and convert a variety of different file formats into pdf files.

A slightly more expensive and upscale application is ScanSoft's PaperPort Professional 10 (www.scansoft.com). It's more expensive, at $199, than PageManger, but it's also more capable, allowing you to annotate scanned documents, and even create and fill in forms. A less expensive $99 PaperPort 10 edition deletes some of the high-end features, though the Professional version is recommended for any serious paperless office use.

Hardware's important, too

The electronic document management process starts with digitizing a document. To do this, you'll need a scanner. You can purchase a flat-bed scanner for as little as $50, and it will certainly scan a document into the needed format when used with the right software application.

Offices, however, deal with a lot of paper. Lifting the lid and having to scan a single page at a time is simply not an efficient way of doing things. Most offices will require a scanner with an automatic document feed (ADD. Flat-bed scanners with an ADF lid are widely available, very affordable, and are certainly an option to consider.

A better option for those offices with significant volumes of documents that need scanning is a scanner like Xerox's DocuMate 252. This $999 scanner has a large document feeder, and can scan either single-sided, or in duplex mode (scanning both sides of a page in one pass through the scanner.) In single-side mode, the 252 can scan as many as 25 pages per minute.

While in duplex mode, it can reach speeds of 50 sides per minute, as it scans both side of the page at the same time. The scanner's resolution is excellent, up to 600 pixels at 48 bits of color discrimination.

There's also plenty of software included, included two scanning applications, a trio of scanner drivers (which let the scanner work with even very high-end document management software applications), and the well-regarded OmniPage Pro OCR application and PaperPort Pro Office.

In fact, the DocuMate 252 itself will fulfill the document imaging and management needs of many small offices. We'd just add an inexpensive flat-bed scanner to the mix so that you can scan in bound material, such as books or magazines, when necessary. The DocuMate 252 is a sheet-fed model, and won't let you scan a bound document.

Ted Needleman is the former associate publisher and editor-in-chief of Accounting Technology magazine. He is now a technology consultant and writer in Stony Point, N Y His email address is [e-mail]