Adding ‘More Value’ – Electronic Document Library

If you are not concerned about our environment and forests, which have been richly devastated over the past several years, you may want to create a ‘hard copy’ library. This assumes that you do not have ‘space’ issues at your office, and have an endless supply of ink and paper readily available. I mention this only because there remain a high percentage of professionals in organizations today that do not operate on the ‘go green’ platform.

Unfortunately, a ‘hard copy’ library is the accepted norm for many individuals that need to ‘hold’ the document and turn the pages as if reading a good book. These individuals are ‘visual’, and therefore need a tangible item to hold and display for others.

The good news I want to share with you today regarding the ‘value added’ features and structure of an ‘electronic’ library is the following:

First, I suggest you perform your ‘due diligence’ required to perform this task ‘proactively’ on your own volition to bring ‘added value’ to your professional groups, and your firm overall. Taking steps like this indicates to your peers, leaders, and HR that you are a dedicated, conscientious, and innovative employee, that ‘goes above and beyond’ the scope of your role. Think of areas where you can contribute in an innovative, cost effective, and proactive way for your firm.

• I want to clarify here that I am not suggesting that you have free rein to run rampant with ideas, and operate solely on your own to implement them. This could only result in big problems for yourself and your groups. Depending on how long you have been working with your team, you will instinctively know whether it is prudent to proceed on your own or not.
• I am encouraging you to ‘think outside the box’ and contemplate areas that you know require attention, or develop new ideas and offer different approaches with the personal and professional skill sets that you possess. The goal of course is to add more value, and make substantial contributions to your teams and your firm overall.

I stress here that there will be times when you will have to speak to either your Team Leader or Boss in order to get the ‘green light’ to move forward with your ideas, ‘after your have performed your due diligence’. By sharing your ideas with your Lead or Boss, you will be able to get valuable feedback and, providing you have indeed ‘done your homework’; it is likely you will receive permission to move forward. 

If you proceed with this task effectively, and in this case that means ‘with your IT professionals’, it will provide staff throughout your organization with a valuable tool while providing ‘knowledge sharing’ capabilities;

• This tool provides an excellent ‘resource’ for all professionals across all lines of service to share and exchange each others’ materials – this not only creates and encourages solid knowledge sharing, but also will save many hours of hard work for all team members involved in new projects, while at the same time, saving the e the firm substantial costs.

This approach does not require any ‘physical space’ to maintain, other than the necessary megabytes in your database;

• The size of the documents database will be dependent upon the number of professionals accessing and utilizing the system, which IT will monitor and adjust accordingly.
• Be sure to ‘advertise’ the availability of this tool through your company portal and email communications. For example, I would suggest that the Production and/or Graphics Departments install the link in their signatures for their ‘inter-office’ emails.

Your ‘document repository’ can be set up in groups or sectors, such as industrial, retail, power, real estate, government, etc. This will enable all users to locate the information they are seeking, whether it be in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint format. Naturally, the documents placed in this repository will be in an ‘unsecured’ PDF format to effectively utilize the database capacity.

You can now meet with your Boss and select the appropriate documents and sectors for this new database. All staff involved should do their best to ensure that other offices are aware of this facility, and monitor their respective contributions. IT will create auto-responders that alert participants when new documents are submitted to the database.

This document database will save tremendous time and effort for all professionals across all lines of service within the firm. This includes saving valuable time and effort for all the Administrative Professionals preparing new documentation. You may be looking for a proposal that can be used with a new client in an industry that is outside of the norm for your firm, or perhaps seeking powerful graphics or PowerPoint projects that can simply be altered with little time and effort.

With this powerful tool in place, there is now no need to ‘reinvent the wheel’. Have fun with it, and work with all the necessary partners in this process to ensure success.