Readiris 16: Stories

Paper has definitely not disappeared from my daily work, even in the digital era. Paper is easily damaged, destroyed or lost; storing large volumes of paper documents is cumbersome and expensive – let alone the ridiculous amount of time it takes to search for a specific document. I still have stacks of hard-copy printouts, invoices, bills, and other paperwork that I have to search through by hand, and archive one page at a time. This is why I recently realized that installing an OCR software became more of a necessity than a luxury

With Readiris I can truly state that my overall productivity and responsiveness has drastically increased. The software automatically converts all my paper clutter into searchable PDFs without any retyping or reformatting required. The amount of lost information because of misplaced paper documents or old digital files is dramatically reduced. I can now rapidly and easily share digital files so that my small organization can access them on any laptop, smartphone or tablet thanks to the software’s direct connection to SharePoint.

The more paper documents you have, the more you need OCR, and Readiris just does the job perfectly!

In addition to managing the workforce on construction sites, I am also in charge of dealing with the piles of paperwork we receive from numerous suppliers. On a construction site, the portable cabin offices are intricate and very rarely equipped with the necessary tools. In the past I would gather all the daily delivery forms, drive back to my company’s headquarters at the end of the day, and spend an extra two hours scanning all these documents and going through all the tedious retyping job.

I didn’t realize at the time that my work could evolve so drastically. I now carry around the IRIScan portable scanner in my laptop backpack from one construction site to another, and I scan all the paperwork on the spot, in my site office.

The scanning part is only the tip of the iceberg; the provided OCR software is even more impressive and allows me to automatically convert the paper delivery forms to PDF files. If my documents have tables with numbers on them I can even turn them to Excel files! I’m all done in a matter of minutes and I can send everything directly to our accountants at HQ via Dropbox. My colleagues can now be more responsive with our suppliers, while I save an incredible amount of time which I can dedicate to the job I love… construction!

It’s no secret that chefs must be able to prepare a wide variety of different foods for guests coming from all walks of life. In order to keep creating unique and imaginative menus, I chose to base my cuisine on international dishes from several continents, and there is no better way to learn about a new exceptional ingredient or culinary know-how than to jump into an airplane, and go experience it yourself with local people.

Since I am a very light traveler, there is no room in my carry-on luggage for any laptop or scanner, which are way too cumbersome! My smartphone is about as much technology I bring along. When I need to capture a menu, an original idea or any other information written on paper, I simply take it out of my pocket, take a picture of the document, and export it to Evernote.

Once I am back at home, I easily retrieve all these documents from my Cloud account and send them to my OCR software for conversion into Word. In addition to keeping me from retyping all these notes, it allows me to edit them and add my special touch to the dishes discovered during my trips. Then, I am only one click away from printing out these new recipes and sharing them with my brigade. And when I am ready to archive them, I can just send them back to the Evernote.