| Story Views | |
| Now: | |
| Last Hour: | |
| Last 24 Hours: | |
| Total: | |
5 Outdated Office Supplies and Their Alternatives
Offices should provide conducive working spaces for employees to promote productivity. An ideal office space should have complete facilities and supplies that enable their workers to accomplish their work efficiently.
But what if your business still uses a lot of outdated tools and machines that prevent your employees from doing their job faster and easier?
Below are some outdated office supplies that you should get rid of in today’s highly connected business landscape and our suggested useful alternatives for your consideration.
Fax machines 
Ever heard of emails? Sending files nowadays is ideally done virtually. Not only are emails more reliable, you are also able to retain the quality of the files that you are sending. However, some clients still prefer to receive documents through a fax machine. If you need to do so, you might want to consider using fax cover sheet templates to make your document more presentable and send it through an online fax service instead so you won’t need to use an actual machine.
CDs and USBs 
Apart from occupying physical space and having a high chance of getting lost in your sea of other CDs and USBs, these two storage devices are not the most reliable when it comes to storing large files for a long period of time. Ever opened your USB after a long time and found out that it is corrupted with no way of retrieving your important files? Nowadays, there’s a lot of storage solutions available online such as Google Drive and Dropbox – and they provide a pretty large virtual space, too! The next time you want to store something or share files with someone else, try uploading your files online and just send the link to your colleague. It makes retrieving your files in the future easier as well.
Post-its
Still using actual post-its for reminders and task lists? Why not try online sticky notes that you can access online anytime, anywhere? You can easily cross out tasks done after accomplishing them even when you are using a different computer or device. The best thing? You’ll help save a lot of trees in the process!
Landlines
In today’s evolving business landscape, accomplishing daily tasks sometimes require you to pick up the phone and get in touch with someone from the other side of the globe. While you can still do this using old school landlines, it is sometimes unreliable and can cost you a lot of money.
Why not use cloud-based phone services or VoIP systems which can work anywhere as long as you have an internet connection? Apart from saving you some bucks, VoIP phone systems allow you to make and take calls from anywhere in the world.
Manual clock-in machine 
Do you still use manual clock-in attendance machines that require your employees to put in an actual time card for it to stamp their time-in and time-out? We hope not. This is a tedious method of taking note of your employees’ attendance records as you have to go through each attendance card one by one at the end of each month. As an alternative, you can use time and attendance software which can give you better insight into your team and help you track the days and hours they are working.
Bottom Line
One of the most important factors that enables high employee productivity is a conducive and work-friendly office space. Fortunately, technology has paved the way for the creation of a lot of tools and solutions that make many job functions faster and easier.
You might just have to invest in some of them – however, it will be worth it in the long run as you’ll get better efficiency rates from your team as a result.
The post 5 Outdated Office Supplies and Their Alternatives appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.
Ramon Ray, Editor & Technology Evangelist, Smallbiztechnology.com
http://www.twitter.com/ramonray | http://www.facebook.com/smallbiztechnology [email protected]
Small Business Technology Tour (Fall 2011)
http://www.smallbiztechtour.com
* Mountain View * Salt Lake City * Boston * Chicago * Atlanta
Source: http://www.smallbiztechnology.com/archive/2017/03/5-outdated-office-supplies-and-their-alternatives.html/
