The financial services industry deals with large quantities of paper, and each piece can be handled many times. Computers were supposed to create less paper, but that has not happened. One theory holds that people like the “feel” of working with paper.

Advocates of the paperless workplace say we should look at a piece of paper once, then scan it or shred it. All documents can be scanned and stored in e-filing systems from which they can be easily retrieved.

According to Sharon Sinpapel, a paperless and virtual office solutions expert, advisors who don’t get a handle on the paper in their practices are headed for confusion, lost documents or inability to put “a finger” on a document in hurry — resulting in unhappy clients and wasted time. And when it comes time to sell a practice, having the right technology in place increases the salability of the business.

Sinpapel has been educating advisors and companies on the advantages of the virtual office for many years. About a decade ago, she came to the conclusion that the paperless office — in which there is no paper and everything needed to conduct business is stored digitally — was something that needed to be explored. She believes that, for every dollar spent creating a document, it can cost as much as $9 to manage it. A paperless office, she says, will streamline, safeguard and economize a business operation.

Taking the paperless office from theory into reality has resulted in reducing her more than 20 years’ worth of business and client records to a number of DVDs, and she makes use of reasonably priced software and hardware.

Sinpapel says that, in a virtual workplace, all documents can be retrieved for viewing, faxing, e-mailing and printing from anywhere in the world at any time that suits your schedule or the schedules of your clients.
Clients are becoming more technologically savvy and want access to everything instantaneously. They want to able to visit an advisor’s Web site when they want and view their statements with up-to-the-minute information.

Advisors also need to be able to produce historical information periodically, and retrieving information electronically is a lot more efficient and a lot faster than going through paper files. Advisors also need to keep documents for legal purposes, and one of the nice things about electronic data is that it doesn’t age the way paper does. It doesn’t tear or fade; it doesn’t smudge or carry coffee stains.

Whether you are an individual advisor or a branch manager, you’ll need to take a few steps in order to go paperless. Sinpapel believes a “virtual office vision” must be formulated. You will have to determine what you can afford to spend. What is your time frame? What are the things that are most important to your clients that you want to provide with virtual access? Sinpapel has developed a “virtual office vision questionnaire” to guide advisors through this process.

Most important, you will require software and hardware that can set you back anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand dollars, depending on the hardware you already have.

The conservation aspect of the paperless office is very important to Sinpapel because saving paper means saving trees. You’ll also be saving money and increasing your bottom line. Over time, you will be able to reduce staff, office space and equipment.
Visit Sinpapel’s Web site at www.paperlessoffice.org and read the first chapter of her e-book, The Virtual Office for the Visionary Enterprise.

Sinpapel will be a keynote speaker at the first AdvisorTech Expo on June 9 at the Toronto Metro Convention Centre. Whether you are a technology buff, a reluctant user or somewhere in between, she will give you ideas that can boost your bottom line.
Registration at AdvisorTech Expo (www.investmentexecutive.com/ATX) entitles you to a full year’s access to the AdvisorTech Network, a new Web-based service designed for advisors, managers and assistants. IE