This article in the Financial Advisor Magazine gives us many tips for organizing a financial services office (and once again, the tips are applicable for many small offices) and controlling disorganization. The article deals with how to deal with the constant flow of paper coming into the office and how to get better organized. Keeping up with the client paper files alone in many financial planners’ offices are enough to cause stress. It is imperative that a system be put in place that keeps managing clutter and setting up a workable paper filing system or document management system, a very high priority. This article provides some good suggestions. You can read a short portion of the article and then click on the link to read the entire article. See Paper Tiger Document Management and Filing System software mentioned in the article.
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Financial Advisor Magazine
July 2004 issue
Conquering The Paperwork Mountain
Some cost-efficient ways to improve productivity–and avoid headaches.
By David L. Lawrence
If you have been in the financial services business for any length of time, you know that paperwork can become an overwhelming task. Apart from the piles of mail that must be sorted through every day, there is the unending task of filing, forms to keep track of and compliance paperwork that, in recent years, has increased tremendously. I have visited financial advisors’ offices where paperwork stretching back months is unceremoniously stacked in piles on the floor of the office. One advisor told me that when the piles get so high that it is difficult to walk to and from the desk, then all other tasks are dropped so that the piles can be dealt with.
Consider how much it costs to maintain inefficient paperwork and filing systems. If, as a direct result of not having efficient systems, it costs you and/or your staff one hour each day (this is probably conservative), and you used a $50-per-hour cost factor over the course of an entire year—the cost of inefficiency could top $12,000 in lost time ($50 x five days per week x 48 weeks).
Read the full version of the article by clicking here.
