About two years ago I started to implement the paperless office. But it was buying on Amazon, not Australian Retail Business that provided the kick start.
Now, as I sit at my desk about to buy another scanner I am faced with a dilemma. I know what I am going to do to resolve this dilemma, but I feel a bit bad about the decision.
I have been using a Canon P-150 Portable Scanner to scan virtually all incoming paper documents. The resultant PDF files are stored in Evernote. This combination actually made the possibility of the paperless office a reality.
Here’s why …
- the scanner is small enough to sit on my desk, next to my screen
- the scanner has a automatic document feeder (ADF) so I just place the document in the feeder and press GO
- the scanner does both sides of each page automatically with no blank pages
- the software handling the scanned image effortlessly moves the generated PDF into Evernote
- Evernote handles all of the document storage with ease (filename, tags etc)
- Evernote automatically carries out OCR conversion of the scanned PDF and adds the result to a full text index of all my documents
- as a bonus, on my Mac computers, the scanned documents are integrated into Spotlight (if you don’t know what Spotlight is I feel sorry for you!)
- and a further bonus is that Google searches with Chrome, optionally automatically include the results of the search of my Evernote documents
- using Evernote means that all of my documents are available on any of my computing devices, anywhere I am (desktop, laptop, iPad, iPhone, office, home, on the road!
- finally, Evernote makes it possible to selectively, and securely, share my documents with staff, family and others
So, it was the combination of the P-150 and Evernote that made this possible? Well not quite, the actual trigger was Amazon! Yes, I bought the P-150 on Amazon for $245. Then the exact same unit retailed for $499 locally. At the time, I influenced several other people to enrich Amazon by following suit.
Nothing has changed! The scanner I want to add to my workflow is a Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300i $283 delivered from Amazon, $399 delivered from Officeworks!
If you have been thinking of going paperless, Evernote plus a SnapScan or P-150 makes the decision a no brainer. Amazon makes it possible.
You guessed it, I clicked the Amazon “Place your order now” button. What would you do?
AND, the question for the Australian Retail Business is … who is making the additional 41% it costs to buy locally?
