To Paper or Not To Paper: Going Paperless With HowNow (part 5)

This article is the fifth in a series on going paperless with HowNow. Click here to read part 6 of this series. To read the rest of the articles, head to the Paperless category.

Symptom: There are no standard operations procedures implemented

I’m sure that’s not quite how you said it. All the same, you know that the way things are done in the firm is not consistent. The ‘This Is How We Do It Here’ procedures and processes are not documented; they reside in peoples’ heads. This reduces quality and increases the firm’s risk of losing that knowledge through staff turnover.

There is no centralised storage system for templates for quotes, proposals, standard letters, Excel templates- the list goes on. Team members save their own versions of such documents on their own computer or drive. Different people are doing things in different ways and using different documents and tools, despite them being in similar roles.

“I’ll keep that file on my laptop. It’s too sensitive.” Sound familiar? Keeping sensitive documents away from prying eyes by storing them on your laptop is poor electronic record keeping. How often do you backup your laptop? What if it was left in a cab or stolen? Your laptop is no place for sensitive documents.

Solution

The Knowledge area of HowNow Manager documents and stores all of your procedures, allowing you to find what you need with a 2-second keyword search. Staff can only access the approved up-to-date version of each procedure. There is consistency across the firm in the way things are done. You can click on a Document Type filter such as Procedure, Checklist, Form, Letter or enter a file extension like .doc or .xls to filter the search results further.

Using the Visibility feature, you can decide which team members can see which documents, protecting sensitive documents without compromising your centralised electronic document storage system. Or, you can use the ‘Encrypt’s feature to lock down files so they cannot be opened via Windows Explorer thus maximizing the benefits of consistency and security.