Hey, Whatever Happened to the "Paperless Office"?

The Paper Chase... Bonnie Boeshart Roberts, Vice President, Portfolio Management at The Pizzuti Companies in Columbus, OH, is on the warpath against paper. "We are a mid-sized developer who would like to minimize the storage of paper copies (from legal documents and due diligence to accounting invoices). We would also like something more sophisticated than simply scanning into PDF files. ... Rather than reinvent the wheel, I would love to hear what other real estate companies have done to move toward a 'paperless'office."

So I poked around PikeNet searching for the words "document management" in the Directory. Here's what I found. The Millennia Group in Elmhurst, IL, provides "document imaging and electronic document services for the commercial real estate industry." ... HyperSend www.hypersend.com advertises its secure document transfer technology as "your digital courier on the Internet." ... RESoft, headquartered in Minneapolis, MN, is a software firm specializing in "document management systems." ... Tampa Bay Systems based in Tampa, FL, markets WebDocumentz (TM), its "Web-based, document- and knowledge-management solution." And I'm sure that there are more.

Yes, I know that almost every property management, transaction management and project management system also includes some form of document management in its products. But the above sites seem to focus exclusively on document management. So what do you think? Does your company use one of these systems? Do you use another service? Are you making progress toward a paperless office? Send me your ideas, and I'll report more in a future Dispatch. Thanks!

--Peter Pike