Why Traditional Filing Systems Don't Work

1. Do you generally have lots of material "to be filed"?

A good indication that your current "traditional filing system" isn't working is that you have lots of material waiting to be filed.

There are two parts to a filing system, FILING AND FINDING. If you don't do the filing, you can't do the finding.

2. Are you unwilling to let someone else file material away?

Most users are reluctant to let anyone else file material away in their traditional filing system? Why? Because they have no idea how to find it later.

So unless you are willing to do your own filing, "stuff" just piles up until you can find the time to file it yourself.

3. Do you remember what you filed in your filing system and where you filed it?

Probably not. Human memory is very poor. We forget at least 50% of what we did, heard or said within 3 days. It is unlikely you will even remember you have something in your filing system, must less where to find it in the majority of cases.

4. Can you find material on the same topic that may be filed in different categories?

Material can only be filed in one location. Most of the time material really relates to two or more categories. This presents two problems. First the same type of material winds up filed in two or many more different locations. Second you will fail to find the material when you look for it in the first category because its in the second. There is no way to find information on the same topic that could be in literally hundreds of different places.

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How Easy2File Solves the Problems

Now here's how Easy2File handles these obvious and fixed problems of traditional filing systems:

1. Do you generally have lots of material "to be filed"?

There's no reason to. You or your assistant can quickly file material away because there is no question about where to file it. With Easy2File its fast to file and easy to file. You just describe the material, take the number given you by Easy2File, write it on the folder, put the material in it and file it away in numeric order in your filing system. Takes perhaps 1 minute for each piece of material. Nothing could be simplier or faster.

2. Are you unwilling to let someone else file material away?

The is a universal comment made by most managers and executives. "Once I let someone else file my material away, I have no idea where it is and little confidence I will every be able to find it again, if I even remember what the material was that got filed. I might as well throw it away as allow it to be put into our filing system."

"Since I have important things to do and not enough time to do them, I certainly am not going to devote my limited time to filing. I ought to be able to delegate that, but I can't for the above reasons."

Sound familiar? It should. We hear this from almost every business person we talk to.

With Easy2File you can delegate filing to almost anyone after spending just a few minutes showing them how you like to describe your material. As if you want to be sure a word or phrase is used when describing it, just underline it with a red pencil or pen and your assistant will include that in the description.

Think what a time saver it will be when you can delegate filing with the confidence you can find the material again when you want it.

You might ask, "How do I know I can find it later?" Well Easy2File lets you Find by entering just one word that would be in the title.

And you can Find on different words very quickly. It takes Easy2File less than 2 seconds to find all files that use that word in the description. You can then simply look down the descriptions and find the material you are looking for.

3. Do you remember what you filed in your filing system and where you filed it?

With Easy2File you can simply enter a word and let it show you everything you have on the subject. You may have totally forgotten you had even filed an article away, perhaps 2 or 3 years ago, but that appears in your list and that is very important to you now.

When you look for one file, you may find 2, 3 or 4 others that you would like to see on the same subject. This can greatly improve your decision making.

4. Can you find material on the same topic that may be filed in different categories?

Traditional filing systems make use of Categories. Your files must fit into these categories. Some material just doesn't fit into one category. Here's a trivial example that will illustrate the point:

You're a home builder. You keep a file with a copy of each of your Sales Price Lists when you issue them. (file as Our Sales Price Lists). You get a copy of your competitor's sales price list. (file as Heritage Homes Price List). You also get a market research article from the newspaper on price trends. (file as Home Sales Price Trends in Denver). Your cost department does an analysis of the leading model of your main competitor to determine if they are pricing it realistically. (file as Sales and Cost Analysis of Heritage Homes Sunset model).

6 months later your sales are slow and you want to reexamine your sales prices and see if you should lower them.

Go into Easy2File and look up Prices.

You will get a list that looks something like this:

[How you might have filed these same articles in a Traditional filing system is shown in blue in the brackets to the right]

With Easy2File, you have found all the information in your system about your subject.

You couldn't do that in a traditional filing system. These four files might be scattered all over your category driven system and it might not even occur to you to look for them. See the above categories in brackets in which you might have filed this information in a traditional filing system.

In a traditional system, you don't even have the titles of your files on a computer. You would have to go read every file title and try to gather your information - an error prone and time intensive activity.

Your situation is undoubtdly different but the idea is the same - being able to pull together information from all through your filing system - and possibly in a WorkGroup, Company or Enterprise system, pulling together information from all thru the organization to help decision making.