PaperPort a favorite for scanning, managing documents

Financial advisers who have complained about finding an economical, easy-to-use document-scanning and management tool aimed at small advisory firms now have no excuse to prevent them from going paperless.

Financial advisers who have complained about finding an economical, easy-to-use document-scanning and management tool aimed at small advisory firms now have no excuse to prevent them from going paperless.
ScanSoft PaperPort 11 Professional from Nuance Communications Inc. of Burlington, Mass., is a good choice as a low-cost solution for scanning and managing documents at the desktop PC level.
The software competes with similar applications from eCopy Inc. of Nashua, N.H., and the Office SharePoint line from Microsoft Corp. of Redmond, Wash.
It also can be used by larger firms seeking a tool for individual users that later could migrate to a centralized, server-based network system.
LeGrand S. Redfield Jr., president of Asset Management Group Inc., has used PaperPort since a second version of the product came out several years ago.
His six-person Stamford, Conn.-based firm has $150 million under management.
“There’s nothing in the way of paper or e-mail attachments that comes in or leaves this office that doesn’t get scanned in or printed to PaperPort. Once we’ve made sure our scan is accurate, we shred the paper,” Mr. Redfield said.
“For our firm, I’m not so worried about the amount of space paper used to take up. Rather, I’m concerned with the amount of time going paperless saves,” Mr. Redfield said.
“In the old days, you had to go and find the file, and then retrieve it. With this system, even if something gets misfiled, you’ve actually got a good shot at getting it back. The time [saved] is phenomenal,” Mr. Redfield said.
Each of the five PCs at Asset Management Group runs PaperPort and has an attached scanner. Every scanned document is sent to a network server that runs Microsoft Windows Server 2003.
Mr. Redfield estimated that the $4,000 to $6,000 invested in his scanning system — a mix of Xerox DocuMate scanners that cost between $700 and $1,000, plus $1,000 for multiple copies and licenses of PaperPort software — represents just a small, yet extremely worthwhile, part of his $50,000 to $100,000 overall investment in office technology.
In a recent review of the software, PaperPort installed easily in less than 10 minutes.
The interface is very intuitive with easy-to-follow menus, instructions and help files.
Once they have installed PaperPort, most users will find the software’s simple folder tree very familiar and similar to that of Microsoft Windows Explorer (the graphical file navigation application that comes bundled with Windows PCs).
Users who have file-sharing turned on and are part of a network can add existing folders to the PaperPort folder tree, as well as create new folders.
They also can map network drives and go to folders on other external network devices.
Another handy feature is Desktop Delivery — found only in the latest version, PaperPort Professional 11 — that lets users know when documents have been added to the network.
Easy searching
Another feature, and one that advisers will probably find most useful, is All-in-One Search, which allows searching by document type or keyword and scheduling of file indexing.
One complaint that Mr. Redfield and his staff have about the software is that it can be slow when serving multiple users on a network simultaneously.
“From a business standpoint, we’re getting faster than the software when you’ve got five people instead of just one using it,” he said.
But the problem isn’t overwhelming.
“I’ve been impressed with their customer support, and they… explained the problem and told me they are working on a way to address it,” Mr. Redfield added. “As long as they keep talking and remain responsive, I have no interest in shifting to something else.”
InvestmentNews technology reporter Davis D. Janowski writes occasional columns alerting advisers to ways they can improve both their access to information and computer-related practice management. He can be reached at [email protected].