Going paperless the right way

One of the promises of the Information Age that hasn't quite come true yet is the "paperless office." As a professional in a tightly regulated industry highly dependent on paper, you've probably been looking forward to the day when you could see the top of your desk again.

The benefits of going "paperless" are obvious. See those filing cabinets over there? Gone. Also gone, all the time you or your staff spend feeding them. Your work is more efficient if everything is where it should be from start to finish, and papers from different files aren't commingled, and nothing gets misplaced. Paperless is more accurate, for example when it comes to deciphering fax orders. And Gulf Coast appraisers will put disaster preparedness at the top of the list of plusses.

Among the reasons paperless hasn't completely caught on is that it seems too daunting, too much of a change to the way you work. That was true when you had to scan everything into a huge .TIF file and drag and drop it yourself onto CDs or ZIP drives. Is that more efficient? Does it save time? No.

Add the fact that there were just some things – field notes, assessors printouts – that you had to keep on paper anyway (don't you?), and a lot of appraisers haven't bothered to make the commitment to doing it right.

Today the technology exists to increase your efficiency, accuracy, time savings and desk surface area manyfold, and you may already have it all.

Before we get into that, going paperless is a change and not something you can blindly stumble into. Take the word of the thousands of appraisers who have thought about going paperless, or tried to go paperless, and either abandoned it altogether or put it off indefinitely:

• Don't shoot for the moon right away. Going "less-paper" gives you some of the benefits of going "paperless," and if you force yourself to, say, buy a Pocket PC and stop taking field notes on paper, and you're not ready, you're bound to slip back into bad habits all around. Have a plan, make it realistic, and develop it considering your and your office's willingness and ability to do some things differently.
• Don't plan to flip a switch and be "paperless." It's not an overnight process. As with anything worth doing, it's worth doing deliberately and not rushing it.
• Don't fly blind. In addition to the advice here, we offer webinars on Report Management, Digital Workfiles and Archiving, Field Data Collection with Pocket TOTAL and Online Ordering, among many others, that will help you develop your new paperless workflow. Take advantage of them and other training opportunities. See our webinar selections and in-person seminar schedule by clicking here.

Now, how can you eliminate at least some paper from your practice right now?

WinTOTAL form filling software and your Appraiser XSite website have tons of features that help you cut down on the amount of paper you use. When your client orders online on your XSite, the property and client data synchs into WinTOTAL without your having to decipher and retype. WinTOTAL will geocode the subject address and add direction and flood maps to your workfile and report. It will even add the subject and comparable balloons on the map and proximities into your report.

These and other data management features of WinTOTAL are well known. What a lot of appraisers, even users, don't know is that WinTOTAL keeps a digital workfile for each property you appraise – and when used properly, it's USPAP compliant. Anything brought in or punched out in digital format is associated with your file and kept in the right place for easy inventory, access, and USPAP-compliant storage. You can drag and drop graphics, photo images, other PDF files and other digital material into your workfile too.

So what about the paper you accumulate for each file? That's where DirectFax comes in if you have an XSite. Aurora generates a bar coded fax cover page unique to both you and each specific report. Fax all your papers to the toll free number on the cover page and DirectFax converts it all to PDF and routes it back to you. It's tagged with your and your assignment's identifying information so it goes in the right file for compliant, paperless storage.

You can also keep redundant copies of each digital workfile offsite and out of harm's way with the Vault. Appraisers set the Vault to automatically upload anything that's changed at whatever interval they're comfortable with, and a secure offsite backup is created. The Vault isn't just storage, it's easy retrieval and identification, too. From any Internet connection you can get in to your secure backup and retrieve templates, old reports, anything you've stored.

The Vault comes with Exact, which stores and restores your WinTOTAL and computer settings, too, including text databases, QuickLists, contacts, digital signatures and more.

WinTOTAL, XSites, DirectFax and Vault are ways you can go "less-paper" with very little change to the way you work. When you're ready to eliminate paper sketches, field notes and data for later re-entry into WinTOTAL, Pocket TOTAL is the mobile application you'll want.

Pocket TOTAL synchs automatically with WinTOTAL, both before you leave for the inspection (you can even take your QuickLists with you) and after you get back. Your form fields, sketches and other data upload directly into WinTOTAL when you're back at the office, so you haven't written or re-typed a thing.

For appraisers who would rather take it all with them, WinTOTAL also works on Tablet PCs. Tablet PCs have many of the advantages of paper: They're easy to use, the surface area is about the size of a sheet of paper, and you can write right on it.

Going paperless doesn't need to be daunting, and with each technological innovation it becomes easier and easier. Many of you have found the "tipping point" with Aurora and your XSite: You finally have the tools you need to make your office paperless, and you don't need to radically change the way you work.