IN PREVIOUS columns I have referred to the process of “creative brooding,” which I learned from a friend. It means to mentally depart from the normal business environment and imagine what your business could be like if you had no limitations.

Creative brooding works even better when you're out of the office. I don't get a lot of time away from business, except for daily 20-mile bicycle rides in the summer-and we get only two months of summer here in northern New York. However, travel to pleasant environs for insurance events creates a nearly perfect opportunity for creative brooding.

At these events, I have always watched corporate “road warriors,” armed with their laptops, and thought it would be fun to be that connected. Two years ago, we acquired a second office and used a virtual private network to link it to our first one. That experience taught me that such connectivity was possible even for a small agency.

Two recent experiences pushed us from dreaming about greater connectivity to achieving it. First, my laptop aged into a relic. I had bought a scanner to use with it, but the computer could not adapt to the scanner's USB connection, no matter how many adapters we tried. So last year we purchased a new, state-of-the-art laptop.

Second, I passed through the Richmond, Va., airport, where I noticed a business lounge with workstations equipped with free high-speed Internet access. The hotel where I stayed on that trip also provided such service. It struck me that high-speed Internet access is becoming increasingly available on the road, just as pay telephone service once rapidly expanded in the past. You can even get Internet access through the phones in airliners, if you're willing to pay $5.95 per minute.

So I began to creatively brood on the possibility of a portable office with free Internet access that could allow me to operate independently from the conventional office whenever I wished. Upon returning home, I talked to my IT consultant about the idea, and he came up with an easy solution: I could use Terminal Services, a product that powers the VPN between our two offices, to connect to the office from my laptop. I can use this program to access any e-mail application or other in-house programs and data, because it gives me real-time access to my office desktop. Then, I can use direct Internet connections to access resources outside the office.

Since our offices scan documents into an electronic filing system, my “portable office” model needed to incorporate scanning as well. The answer was our year-old Visioneer XP100 scanner-the one that would not work with my ancient laptop. The scanner is smaller than a rolling pin, fits right in my new laptop's case and, through the USB port, is powered by the laptop's battery. It scans color and black-and-white documents; and while it isn't as fast as a desktop scanner, the quality of its scanned PDF files is just as good. Terminal Services lets me log on to our main office system, access our server's complete Microsoft Outlook contact list, select a person and send him or her an e-mail message with an attachment scanned on my laptop. It's just as good as being in the office.

But what about those pictures that help an underwriter understand an account or a claims adjuster quickly visualize a loss? Or assume you want to taunt the folks who are waist-deep in snow while you're in a warmer climate? The solution is a digital camera. I bought an inch-thick, 3.2-megapixel camera with a credit-card-size “footprint” for $234 on eBay. (The model, a Canon SD110, sells new for approximately $349.) With a 256mb storage card, you can use such a camera to record better video and sound than the bulky video cameras of just a few years ago could. A USB connection creates on-the-fly flexibility, with immediate recognition when you plug in the USB cord. My grand total was less than $2,000 for everything-and well worth the investment.

This configuration can give agents an impressive level of flexibility and responsiveness when they're away from the office-and may even eliminate the need to ever be there. It's an example of how growing high-speed Internet access has created an entirely new set of options for us. Take a break and spend some time thinking about the possibilities. Consider how different work could become for you and your employees. The required technology is here today.

Special Reports /

Automation: With today's technology, you can operate anywhere

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