From Paperless Offices to Paperless Communities: The Common CV #SaaS

As far back as the 60s, visionaries touted technology as the means to the paperless office. Today, anyone who works in an office can attest to the fact that these visions have never fully materialized.

For countless reasons, most modern offices still have photocopiers and printers which are used many times a day. At the same time, courier services of all types are rushing around hardcopy documents.

The latter point begs the question: IS IT POSSIBLE TO HAVE A PAPERLESS OFFICE WITHOUT HAVING PAPERLESS COMMUNITIES?

At the core of SmartSimple’s platform is the desire to enable effective community management and engagement of businesses and organizations alike.

A core aspect of engaging with ones community is knowing who one deals with. Before implementing SmartSimple, many grant makers would receive hardcopy applications that must be copied and redistributed to program managers, reviewers and so on. The contact information would be entered into some sort of database and the applicant's information would forever be attached to the application. So in addition to having to store many applications, there was a strong chance that identical documents were received and repeatedly stored along with distinct applications completed by the same individual.

At first, we addressed this issue by allowing applicants to create, save and update profile information (individual or organizational) and then apply for a grant under their profile. Soon we realized that an updatable profile was not enough…especially in the world of academic research.

That’s why the Common CV is now standard functionality in SmartSimple’sGrants Management System. It’s essentially a profile on steroids, as it is designed to accommodate the addition of transactional information like new research, awards and publications.

So back to the main point; was trying to create a paperless office a redundant exercise, considering that every organization has an extended community? And is including communities into the discussions of paperless offices one way to realize this long elusive goal?

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