New hardware and software give solution providers quick ways to reduce their customers' paper glut.

Every company knows from personal experience that paper is painful. The clutter of hard-copy documents that businesses manage means inefficiency, breakdowns in customer service and potential run-ins with regulatory agencies.

The good news is that the tools to manage mountains of paper are more affordable and easier to use than ever, which in turn makes them an easier sell to customers. Other selling points? T hese tools reduce operational costs by creating electronic documents that can be more quickly retrieved than paper-based information destined to be filed (and perhaps misfiled) in conventional folders.

Another plus — electronic audit trails, showing who read individual documents and how they may have altered them, provide a foundation for regulatory-compliance strategies.

But first, end users need a way to create and distribute electronic documents. The cornerstone technology of document capture systems is multifunction products (MFPs), which allow companies to digitize documents and immediately move them into customer business processes, document management applications and archiving systems.

The best MFPs offer intuitive graphical touch screens and clear menus that keep learning curves short for customers. Ease-of-use features in turn can shorten sell cycles for solution partners who can demonstrate to clients that controlling paper doesn’t require complicated solutions.

MFPs have become economical enough that solution partners can sell multiple workgroup devices, which provide greater convenience for clients than single departmental units.

For higher margins, solution providers can pair MFPs with document management software that provides a range of advanced handling and sending features. For example, products like Hewlett-Packard’s Digital Sending Software (DSS) let companies enhance security by encrypting documents before they send them from an MFP to the internal network. DSS also can send the documents to a variety of targets, such as fax machines, electronic folders and Web sites.

HP AutoStore provides additional capabilities, including a middleware layer, so users can send documents and images to third-party document management applications. HP AutoStore’s image processing engines facilitate forms processing, optical character recognition (OCR) and barcode recognition. Solution providers can also team HP AutoStore with third-party products like EMC Documentum ApplicationXtender, which quickly builds electronic filing cabinets for customers.

A host of other third-party programs also build on the MFP foundation. Informa offers document-management applications geared to the needs of small businesses. This includes ImageQuest mfp, which when used with an MFP lets end users scan documents, index them according to subject and use built-in retrieval tools to quickly locate files from any computer attached to the internal network.

Another easy-to-implement choice is eCopy ScanStation OP, which provides an integration link from digital scanners and copiers to end-user e-mail systems and networked applications, fax machines, printers and document management systems.