Research has shown that significant knowledge and productivity losses result from traditional paper-and-pen note-taking.

For example, think about how much time you spend taking paper notes at client meetings; it’s a huge part of how you capture information every day. The danger in this is that paper notes can be lost forever — and never shared nor acted upon.

According to Erin Elofson, Microsoft Canada’s OneNote product manager in Mississauga, Ont., financial advisors can be categorized as information workers; they work with data. Most of what advisors deal with is unstructured data, compared with formal documents or presentations.

This is where OneNote comes in. It is a digital note-taking software program that is designed to increase your efficiency. It works on your desktop, laptop or tablet PC. It significantly differs from your word-processing program because it lets you take notes, organize them, share them, move them around within the program and later retrieve the information when you need it.

It is easy to start to use OneNote in your business. The file structure is composed of folders, sections and pages. Pages can be easily added to a section by clicking the “add page” tab or by using the “new page” command. Each page is dated and time-stamped.

OneNote was developed in part to do away with the amount of time and effort involved in transcribing notes and searching through paper to retrieve key pieces of information. You store all your notes, including client research and meeting notes, in your computer. And you have access to your digital notes in your office, home or off-site with a client.

You can drag text, images and charts from investment Web sites and drop them into your OneNote notebook to be used later at client meetings. OneNote can automatically capture URLs and clip dates; it even has a built-in research service.

It automatically saves whatever you put in it. The program saves your work every 30 seconds and when you exit the program, whichever comes first. When you return to the program, you’ll come back to the last page on which you were working.

Elofson points out that, although notes tend to be brief summaries of presentations or discussions, you may forget what a particular word or phrase means because of your note-taking capabilities. The software also allows you to record audio digitally from client interviews or phone conferences (with the client’s permission) so you won’t miss any critical comments or essential information. This may be a valuable tool for meeting compliance requirements. The software makes a note of when the audio recording started and its time is stamped.

You can distribute and share notes with your clients by e-mailing them directly from OneNote. Recipients do not need to have OneNote installed in order to read your notes; OneNote automatically converts them into HTML format. You can keep track of client questions or research items that need attention using customized note flags. This means you can reformulate your recommendations and outline your thoughts quickly by rearranging your notes with ease. The software automatically searches through your notes to create note flag summaries.

You can also create Outlook tasks directly from OneNote. To take advantage of this feature, you must be running Microsoft Office 2003. Although you can use OneNote on its own, you will take your team efficiency to another level if you are running Office 2003. You can easily organize digital client notes into formal Microsoft PowerPoint presentations or Microsoft Word reports without having to track down sticky notes, slide-show printouts or spiral-bound binders.

You can also e-mail relevant client meeting notes to remote team members. And you can create shared team notebooks to review and update team deliverables and keep colleagues informed of client progress.

Although the software is easy to use, Elofson says, it may be difficult to adapt to because it requires a fundamental behavioural change. We have all been conditioned to taking paper notes, so getting used to putting data on a PC can be a challenge. But if you have an understanding of how the product functions and commit yourself to changing your behaviour, you will never look back. IE