By Lisa Kanarek
Equipping your office with the right technology will help you increase your productivity. However, the technology in your office, whether a PC, printer, fax, or any other electronic equipment, is only as effective as the person using it and can create a few organizing challenges.
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If you keep too much information stored in your computer, get in the habit of purging documents on your hard drive the same way you would the papers in your file cabinets. If you know that you will never refer to a document again, dump it. Otherwise, when you need to find an important document, you'll waste too much time searching through unnecessary documents, until you finally find what you need.
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Don't wait until your computer crashes to think about backing up your data. One of the best investments you can make is in a reliable back up system. You can choose between removable media drives or external hard drives. If you don't backup your data, you'll waste endless hours attempting to recreate the information and will inevitably lose valuable, irreplaceable data. Equipment is easy to replace, while data is not.
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Buy the highest quality printer that you can afford. It's easy to spend more money on your computer and skimp on your printer, yet keep in mind that instead of seeing your computer, your clients will probably only see your correspondence or any other information that you generate from your office. Whether you're preparing a resume, newsletter, or four-color brochure, it's important to give your clients the highest quality printouts that you can afford.
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When faxing documents, include on your cover page a brief listing of everything you are faxing in case the entire fax is not transmitted. It also serves as a record of what you faxed. Remember that if you have a thermal paper fax and want to save a particular fax, you must photocopy it before the fax fades.
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If you want to minimize your paper files, you can convert them to computer documents by using a scanner. There are handheld, sheet-fed, flatbed and optical pen scanners available for use in a corporate or home office. You can even use a scanner to enter business cards into a contact management software program.
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Make sure that your voice mail system is high quality and able to handle the volume of calls you receive. Also, your system should be equipped with enough options to meet your needs (for example, a call tree that allows callers to press one or two for more options). When recording your outgoing message, identify yourself or your company, make sure your message is audible and ask the caller to leave the best time to return your call. The latter will reduce the amount of time you spend playing phone tag.
Technology will help you save time and increase your efficiency. If you find the right technology to meet your needs, learn how to use it and more importantly, take time to use it.
Home office expert Lisa Kanarek is the founder of HomeOfficeLife.com and the author of Organizing Your Home Office For Success (Blakely Press) and 101 Home Office Success Secrets (Career Press).
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