OfficeDrop's head of marketing, Healy Jones, recently had a guest post in Mashable on 3 tips for making mobile apps more discoverable. As OfficeDrop continu

Great Interview with OfficeDrop Customer Unique Cleaning Services

“When the Bottom Line Is Buried in Paper”

An OfficeDrop’s cust

OfficeDrop Announces $1 Million Funding Round to Support Major Advancements in Product Development

OfficeDrop’s Digital Filing Technology Enhancements Fuel Fast User Growth and Record Momentum

409 days ago

Upgraded ScanDrop for Mac Now Digitizes and Organizes Documents Directly Within Dropbox; Converts Files to Editable Online Copies with Google Docs OCR Compatibility

420 days ago

ScanDrop Mac

ScanDrop for the Mac launched in January and continues to get good reviews by users and journalists. The application is available in the

Businesses looking to take advantage of the power of going paperless face an interesting conundrum: once you are using digital files, where do you store them? A digital filing system can be a great way to increase your office's productivity by lowering the costs of storing, sharing and backing up information. There are a lot of different digital filing systems, but what makes one better than another? Here is a list of key features that you shouldn’t pass up when choosing a way to manage your digital information.

Versatility

Some digital filing systems are restrictive and confined when compared to more versatile options. Before uploading your information, make sure there are multiple ways to access or export your information, and that you are not locked into one system. A real digital office makes it easy for you to get your information OUT in addition to being able to interact with other digital services. Otherwise, it can be difficult to collaborate across offices, and even harder to share information with people outside your organization. 

As an example of versatility, OfficeDrop lets you link your account with other systems like Evernote and Google Docs. You can also easily share documents through OfficeDrop and can also download PDFs as needed.

Security

Of course you will want to review the security features of any digital filing system where you will be storing important information. Key features that you should check for include:

• Backup
• Firewall
• Encryption
• Password protection

If these features are not easily accessible or clearly stated by your digital filing provider, you should probably consider a different service.

Search

Document search allows you to look across your entire document store with one simple search bar. If your digital filing system doesn’t have a search feature, you’re forfeiting potentially the most attractive and productive aspect of digital document management. Before choosing a filing system, be sure it has a search function! Since OfficeDrop converts all documents to text-searchable PDFs, you’re able to search and retrieve any document with search terms contained in the title or body of the document.

Accessibility

Speaking both to points of access, and learning curve, accessibility is key when choosing a digital filing system. If you’re going to ask employees and clients to access documents from a digital storage area, then the interface should be simple enough for them to learn the system in a few hours. 

Accessibility also means you can securely access your documents from anywhere. If you can only access your information from a single place or computer then you may as well have paper stuck in a filing cabinet. It is common these days to have information securely stored in the cloud so that any document can be securely accessed from any internet connection. Again, be sure to review the security features and be sure any data is encrypted when being accessed online.

Hopefully these are helpful guidelines that will make it easier for you to evaluate digital filing systems. Just remember - the point of digital filing is to take advantage of technology. Choose the digital filing system that allows you to get the very most out of your documents.

About OfficeDrop

OfficeDrop is a cloud filing system, scanning software provider and document scanning service that helps small businesses manage paper and digital documents. OfficeDrop provides tools that sync businesses’ desktops and scanners with an online search engine and cloud filing cabinet. The affordable service saves businesses time and money by enhancing paper based collaboration and workflows, and by bringing paper to digital platforms. Headquartered in Cambridge, MA, OfficeDrop was founded in 2007 and has won awards such as AlwaysOn Global 250 and MITX Technology Awards. For more information, visit www.officedrop.com.

From my post on Pixily.com's blog: http://blog.pixily.com/blog/2010/01/08/top-free-and-low-priced-sales-and-marketing-saas-tools-for-small-businesses/

Now that small business SaaS is becoming mainstream, powerful marketing tools can be utilized to build a productive, cost effective marketing strategy for your small business. Five years ago when I worked for a big company we used multi-million dollar tools to track and manage our pipeline. Today, there are plenty of SaaS applications to oil your sales and marketing machine - a lot of them cheap if not free. Here are some of the best SaaS apps we have found for running sales and marketing:

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is the free web analytics tool we use to track site usage to our website. Of course it does the basics like showing us how many visitors we’ve had recently, but it also provides deeper intelligence into the sources of our traffic (from search, links and paid advertising). In addition, it shows us which of our traffic sources, landing pages and blog posts are resulting in actual closed sales and real leads. This is one of the first things I check when I get into the office in the morning.

Zoho CRM

We recently switched from Salesforce to Zoho CRM because Zoho allows for the creation of more online forms at a lower price point. Since we are an online-based business, and have a number of white papers and domains that we run, we need many different ways for potential customers to communicate their needs with us online. Zoho also does the basic blocking and tackling you’d expect in a CRM, allowing note-taking on leads, status updating, report generation, etc. Again, cheap and it’s working well for us. Zoho CRM is free for the first three users.

Pixily

Of course we use our own cloud based service! Pixily helps paper intensive small businesses manage their paper and digital files by scanning and hosting the scanned documents in an online management system. I use Pixily for two major purposes: one, to store + share all of our press, and two, to manage our marketing expenses. Every time I get an invoice or receipt I upload, scan, or email it into the “Marketing” folder in our Pixily account. For example, if I have a bill from Vistaprint for brochures we printed I’ll email it into the 2009/expenses/marketing/December folder. Then, our accountant logs in at the end of the month and can easily see all of our expenses from a single place, making book keeping simple, and making it easier to calculate the ROI from our different marketing campaigns. Pixily is also inexpensive. Pricing for digital plans starts at $4.95/mo and for paper plans starts at $14.95/mo.

Wordpress

We run multiple blogs (blogs are the greatest, easiest way to communicate with our customers), and having a simple blog publishing solution like Wordpress is important. Since there is no limit to the number of writers we can have in the system, our product people and our marketing people can all create and edit each other’s content, and we can set up a simple publishing schedule. Since our main Pixily blog drives about 15% of our sales conversions, it’s well worth the effort. Oh yeah, and the price - in addition to the software being free, the hosted version is also free.

CoTweet

Yes, we are on twitter, and we’ve recently started using CoTweet. It’s an application that allows multiple users to share the same twitter user name (in our case @pixily). Cotweet allows us to see what our last few tweets were easily, so that the marketing team doesn’t send out an overlapping message that the CEO just tweeted from the @pixily account.

Grasshopper

Grasshopper is a VoIP service that we have used to put our sales team in contact with customers. We’ve got our toll- free number on the top of our home page because it’s important for our potential customers to know they can easily contact us. Grasshopper enables us to project that big, solid company feel with dedicated extensions for each salesperson and custom recorded greetings and department forwarding. Above all, it’s a professional and cost effective way to put customers in contact with your sales team. Pricing starts at $9.95/mo.

ProvideSupport

Provide Support is the application we use for customer service, but it is equally utilized for sales and marketing. Provide Support is a great way to install a ‘chat with me’ button. On our website there is a ‘chat with me’ button that puts users in contact with a human being in the case they have any questions about the service prior to signing up. This is a cheap and easy way to engage customers via your website and we highly recommend it. Pricing starts at $15/mo.

ConstantContact

We aspire to the “touchless” sales model, which requires some pretty sophisticated email management. ConstantContact has been great for us, both in terms of functionality and price, although I imagine it would also be great for a company running basic email campaigns. For me, the best part about this service is that I was able to login and within a few minutes started sending emails - it was that easy to use. Pricing starts at $15/mo.

With the advent of low priced SaaS marketing solutions, small businesses can now manage their sales and marketing pipeline just as well as large competitors. The best part of these tools is that you usually don’t have to install or maintain any software or equipment. While large companies have legacy tools, into which they invested hundreds of thousands (or millions) of dollars, small businesses can nimbly shift to the best solution. I’d encourage you to take advantage of the free trials offered by most of the SaaS solutions mentioned above. I think you’ll find that many of them will make you more productive and enhance your customers’ sales experiences. 

About OfficeDrop

OfficeDrop is a cloud filing system, scanner software provider and document scanning service that helps small businesses manage paper and digital documents. OfficeDrop provides tools that sync businesses’ desktops and scanners with an online search engine and cloud filing cabinet. The affordable service saves businesses time and money by enhancing paper based collaboration and workflows, and by bringing paper to digital platforms. Headquartered in Cambridge, MA, OfficeDrop was founded in 2007 and has won awards such as AlwaysOn Global 250 and MITX Technology Awards. For more information, visit www.officedrop.com.

Cloud Computing - What Is It?

At OfficeDrop (a cloud based digital filing system and scanner software company), we realize that a lot of small business owners have heard of cloud computing but don't realize how it can help your business. For people that don’t know, cloud computing is a great way for small businesses to utilize IT resources without costs and responsibilities of physical infrastructure. Since we 've built our business in the cloud, and since our business is helping your business, we want you to understand what, exactly, this means.

Cloud Computing as a Metaphor

To explain the metaphor, the cloud is the internet – no big secret and computing is…computing. Essentially, cloud computing is a platform for accessing and utilizing your businesses IT via the internet. This means nearly all of your IT resources – your servers, data storage, software/ programs – are hosted on the internet. NOT sitting in your office. It used to be that all of your computing would have to be done by your own servers, hardwired to your business. Now that the internet is around, your servers don’t have to be hardwired, and you don’t even need to have your own. Instead, you can rent server space from anywhere in the country from people like Amazon, who have already paid the overhead. Utilizing this system with SaaS, which does the same thing with software, one could theoretically run an entire business from various cyber cafés (if those still exist) without purchasing any of their own personal hardware or software at all.

Why the Cloud is Great for Small Businesses

Cloud computing helps small businesses in a number of ways. In general, cloud computing offers a more versatile model both technically and economically. With cloud computing, you don’t have your own servers/hardware. On the economic end of things, operating in the cloud lets you pay as you go, and you only pay for what you use. So on one hand you have lower startup costs because you don't have to purchase expensive equipment when you are getting started. On the other hand, cloud computing allows for great scalability, since you don't have to keep buying servers every time you add an employee or a new software system. It’s the scalability of cloud computing that makes it especially effective with quickly growing small businesses. In addition, cloud computing removes the need for an IT expert on payroll. Unless your company is actually developing software, you don’t need the techies that would normally be running around putting out sever fires. Now, most small businesses are probably not going out and directly purchasing cloud computing units from Amazon. But where a small business can take advantage of cloud computing is in purchasing basic software like CRM, help desk, document management, email and more. Instead of purchasing hardware, buying software on a disk and hiring an IT professional to setup the hardware install that software a small business can purchase software over the internet - typically with no installation required - from a Software-as-a-Service provider. Usually this means that you've got a monthly contract instead of a big up front purchase. And, as we've already mentioned, you don't need to buy a server to host the software!

OfficeDrop Brings the Power of the Cloud to Your  Business' Paper and Digital Files

OfficeDrop works similarly to cloud computing but with scanning and document management software. On the scanning side, buying high quality scanners and formatting scans to a computer is a very expensive process, but you don’t have to pay all that – we already have. Instead, you pay one low monthly fee to use the system we’ve already implemented. Once we scan your paper documents, we put them in the cloud too, as digital documents so you can search and access them from any internet connection. Again, you don't need to own your own server and remote backup if you use our online document management system. Plus, you won't have to set up things like VPNs if you want to access your documents remotely - you can just use the browser on your laptop or iPhone. We’re happy to be a part of the cloud computing trend here at OfficeDrop, and hope you take advantage of the benefits it can offer your small business.

About OfficeDrop

OfficeDrop is a cloud filing system, scanner software provider and document scanning service that helps small businesses manage paper and digital documents. OfficeDrop provides tools that sync businesses’ desktops and scanners with an online search engine and cloud filing cabinet. The affordable service saves businesses time and money by enhancing paper based collaboration and workflows, and by bringing paper to digital platforms. Headquartered in Cambridge, MA, OfficeDrop was founded in 2007 and has won awards such as AlwaysOn Global 250 and MITX Technology Awards. For more information, visit www.officedrop.com.