Paperless

In the spring of 2003 I had been out of college and working as a financial analyst for 3 years. Every month I received 10 large boxes of 17 hole punch print out paper that included 2 copies of all the financial statements for the 2nd largest advertising agency in the world. It was my job to slice and dice them by report, by department, etc. I bound one complete copy in large blue plastic material for accounting use and ultimately record keeping and storage. These were stored in large file cabinets that filled the halls of the accounting department for 2 years at which time they were moved offsite. Offsite was your typical self storage unit, or 2, or 5, or more storage units. The other copy was split up by department and bound in much smaller spirals with clear plastic covers a lot like your typical notebook from Staples or Office Depot. I would hand deliver these to the various department heads around the 11 floors we occupied in the 42 floor building I sat in and 1 floor in the building across the street in downtown Detroit. I always enjoyed visiting the lady across the street. You could still smoke in that building and we both indulged so I was blessed with 7 minutes of conversation with someone who had much more experience than me.

I enjoyed the camaraderie this part of my job provided very much, but often thought of how archaic and wasteful it was. With the reliability of email, hard drives, and CDs at the time and being fresh out of college it seemed strange technology had not yet been implemented. It took 6 months working with our accounting software provider to analyze my request to receive all this data electronically. They were finally able to provide a data dump onto our server with all the necessary restricted access protocols. For another 6 months we got both paper and electronic data. Meanwhile I procured an external CD burner. After the trial period was successful I still got to make my rounds, but now with CDs to deliver. Many people were getting rich from the dot com boom going on then. I was dreaming and grinding. I do feel rich now reflecting on this experience knowing that I increased efficiency, helped the environment, and eventually eliminated the storage facility fees. That was the birth of the idea that brought me here today, rich in spirit offering a valuable service for a modest commission.