FolderMill: a Component in Building a Paperless Office

FolderMill software can become an important component in a paperless office system. It can support the conversion of the full range of documents in different formats to a single format for subsequent processing. Without this, one could not even conceive of a paperless office.

Talk of a paperless office started a while ago, over a decade ago, in fact. Many experts were optimistic about mass migration to paperless solutions at the time. However, reality turned out to be somewhat less rosy. No one has succeeded so far in eliminating paper altogether. And indeed, some experts have started thinking that a paperless office is pure utopia.

In actuality, however, the truth is somewhere in the middle as usual. In principle, it is possible to build a paperless office today. But it is not certain that such a thing is even necessary. Because based on past experience, paperless solutions are less convenient than physical documents in certain cases. This does not mean, however, that one should completely disdain the use of automated document management software. It is just that the utility of the various components of a paperless office has to be evaluated in advance.

FolderMill software could serve as an example of this type of component. What is that? FolderMill is a fairly interesting solution to convert source files of virtually any type to PDF or one of the seven most popular image formats, including TIFF and JPG. This product plays a very important role in a paperless office: it brings documents of different types to a single format for subsequent processing, information interchange with partners and customers, and archiving. This task is especially critical for large corporations with an extensive affiliate network. After all, different organizations within such corporations frequently use different software. Or different versions of the same software. Therefore, document compatibility is somewhat of a problem.

Thus, FolderMill can easily be regarded as one of the components of a paperless office. But where is its deployment justified and where can it become a success story for migration to a paperless office? Let us look at a couple of cases in point. Imagine that you have a company that makes extensive use of facsimile communications. And what it is that is being sent by fax is beside the point: administrative orders, directives, and instructions for affiliates, price lists and offers for potential customers, some documents for partners, etc.

Traditionally, this task is addressed as follows. First, the required documents are compiled. And frequently, a separate document is created for every customer, partner, affiliate (with a personalized message, special offer, etc.) The documents are then printed and sent out by fax following which the hard copy is destroyed. Well, FolderMill makes the process significantly simpler, faster, and cheaper. First, the documents are compiled. Then, they are converted to TIFF using FolderMill and sent out to recipients in this format through a fax modem. The advantage of this paperless solution is obvious.

Here is another example. Imagine that a company publishes a large number of documents to the Internet. These documents could be illustrated product catalogs, presentations, offers, etc. The best format for these is PDF. This way, they will look the same when opened by any person on any computer and, in addition, are very easy for search engines to index. In this case, FolderMill is the ideal solution for creating PDF documents within a paperless office. The use of FolderMill simplifies web document management considerably.

Thus, it could be stated with confidence that FolderMill software is one of the important components of a modern paperless office. And even if your company has not given up paper entirely, the deployment of this product as the automated document management solution will help optimize enterprise workflows.