Please help our SMB finally go paperless!

February 10, 2011 8:43 AM

What paperless solution would you recommend for a manufacturing company with ~60 employees? (please chime in with comments about your employer's paperless solution)

We've been trying to go paperless for years and we've decided that we're really going to try to make it happen in 2011. So many hours are wasted digging through filing cabinets looking for paperwork (purchase orders, packing slips, etc.) that are either lost or misplaced.

Right now, we're considering DocuWare. Do you have direct experience with that solution or can you recommend a better one?

posted by siclik to work & money (6 answers total)

please chime in with comments about your employer's paperless solution

Sure, DoD, we've been going paperless for the last 21 years that I've worked there. Seriously, though, do you use an ERP? Who is providing your software and support now?
posted by fixedgear at 9:00 AM on February 10, 2011

I actually have 15 years experience with DocuWare...feel free to Mefi Mail me any questions you have....
posted by keep it tight at 9:09 AM on February 10, 2011

You haven't said what type of business you are. All you've said is you have 60 employees (of which how many are IT?) that do some sort of thing on a daily basis that makes some one money.

(I work for a law firm of 150 that works for a Fortune 50 and we've been "paperless" for years. We've got just as much paper as the day we started.)
posted by Brian Puccio at 9:11 AM on February 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

Whatever "paperless" solution you choose, make sure that it is crafted with very careful attention to the actual work process of employees. A paperless environment will change the work process, but it shouldn't make it harder/more time-consuming/more complex.

My employer switched to an allegedly paperless system (which we're switching away from, apparently) which was 1. created without significant employee input about work process 2. had a very poor reporting capacity while being purpose-built to make it difficult to print records of each transaction, so a LOT of stuff got lost 3. a substantial increase in the time spent on each process, plus a bunch of new tracking and approval processes which were also complex and a time-suck. It was a complete disaster. Even now it's really difficult to find out when a check has been cut, if a bill has been paid, etc etc. After three years, we're not really up to speed on reporting capacity.

And of course, everyone is completely obsessed by creating workarounds and printouts and by getting paper back-ups (I have many more excel spreadsheets than I used to) because we can't find anything in the paperless system.
posted by Frowner at 9:19 AM on February 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

Custom manufacturing company with exactly one person who handles all IT responsibilities. About half of the employees are in the office (purchasing, HR, sales, engineers, programmers, etc.) and half are on the production floor (fabricators, equipment operators).

SYSPRO is our ERP.
posted by siclik at 10:23 AM on February 10, 2011

You might look at Arena Solutions.
posted by judith at 1:24 PM on February 10, 2011