Finding programs that can boost agency productivity

I marvel at the Microsoft family of programs. Each program is useful in its own right, and the design of all the programs makes it relatively easy to become familiar with similar commands across programs. Here are a few of my favorites:

• Microsoft Word has become the standard for word processing, and it continues to improve. The new word-processing software for Tablet PCs is giving us a glimpse of what a word-processing program can be without the hobbling "snap-to-grid setting" that Word still uses. In any version, the "Table of Contents," "Bookmark," and "Track Changes" functions are especially useful for a busy office that sends, receives and modifies numerous documents.

• Microsoft Excel is an excellent spreadsheet program and is vital in my agency's operations. No one works here without learning everything there is to know about spreadsheets. My favorite Excel features are the "vlookup" formula (basically, "if this matches that, then return this other thing); the "Right" or "Left" formulas, which truncate a text or numeric entry from a specified number of spaces from the right or left; conditional formatting; scenarios; and pivot tables. A host of Excel gurus have demonstrated some amazing things the program can do, beyond its simple, best-known uses.

• Microsoft PowerPoint not only enables smooth projector and laptop presentations, but is also the best poor-man's publishing software. A portion of our agency procedures manual uses PowerPoint's text boxes, connector lines and arrows that move with the attached text boxes.

When producers prepare PowerPoint presentations, I require them to recite my two PowerPoint rules: 1) You are the "show," not the slide presentation (if the PowerPoint is more interesting than you, then who needs you?), and 2) rehearse and rehearse some more. Our recent purchase of a SMART Board for our conference room (www.smarttech.com) has added a fun flavor to presentations.

• We use Microsoft Outlook for e-mail and for its shared calendar function. Combined with Exchange and Web Access, Outlook is smooth and relatively simple and adapts easily to the multitude of "add-ins" that Outlook Web sites offer (see www.slipstick.com). I'm still trying to convince the Outlook programmers that creating a fully integrated "Meeting Agenda" and corresponding "Minutes" form, or better yet a complete module, is in everyone's best interest.

• Other Microsoft products such as MapPoint, Publisher and OneNote (for tablet PCs) are solid background programs. OneNote for the Tablet PC is feeling the heat from a fast-growing list of rivals. InfoPath is the latest newcomer to the Professional suite. It boasts a tight integration between forms and data. Our agency's timesheets may soon be designed and distributed with InfoPath.

Tech doctor

As PCs get faster and more powerful, there seems to be a growing relationship between "high-tech" and "high-maintenance." When glitches occur, I remember the advice given to me by my predecessor: "Stop trying to figure out why!" The following programs are essential to the smooth operation of your computers and to fixing a variety of problems.

• Diskeeper (www.diskeeper.com) is set to defragment my hard drive every night so it's clean and orderly when I arrive for work in the morning. (I leave my PC on all the time.) It beats the built-in defrag program that comes with Windows. The "Set It and Forget It" feature is good basic design work.

• Ad-Aware (www.lavasoftusa.com) identifies and quarantines all the unwanted registry changes, spyware and junk that plagues my PC after a casual jaunt around the Web. A close second place goes to Spybot (www.spybot.info), and sometimes I run both. (I run the free version of both programs.)

• Trend Micro (www.trendmicro.com) has kept our entire system clean of viruses for almost a year. No virus protection software works alone; your watchfulness is vital. I constantly send my staff reminders about ignoring suspicious e-mails. Trend even has a live virus outbreak map to put on our Web site for glitz.

• With two flat-screen LCD monitors on my desk, RealtimeSoft's Ultramon software (www.realtimesoft.com) is tremendous at enhancing the choices between right screen and left screen. I can shoot a window from right to left faster than you can blink…that's really important, right?

• A recent find is a free executable program called TFCleanup (www.thirdring.net/tfcleanup/). With a quick click on the desktop icon, it erases temporary Internet and Windows files. The current office record for temporary Internet files is 78,343! (Perhaps this is a management problem…)

All-access, all the time

The more our agencies become automated, the more we need access to our systems to do business on the road or when we want to work from home. A variety of relatively inexpensive programs have sprung up to address this need.

• When I'm away from the office, I use Gotomypc (www.gotomypc.com) for complete access to my computer from any Internet connection. The response is slightly delayed, and when using the program you might want to ensure your office machine's monitor is turned off-otherwise everyone at the office can watch your screen and see what you're working on. Accessing my two-screen office PC from my one-screen home PC is enhanced by the simplicity of Ultramon's screen handler program.

• With Symantec's pcAnywhere (www.pcanywhere.com), we connect from our desktop computers to change the visitor's greeting board in our foyer at a moment's notice. We set up a wireless system in our office to control a wireless-enabled PC in a closet near our front entrance. With that machine linked to a nice-looking flat-screen LCD on the foyer wall, we use a single-page PowerPoint slide to welcome visitors to the office. With a background picture that we change daily (right now, it's Yosemite or tulips, or something) and the visitors' names in large, bold letters, everyone feels special.

• Web Access with Exchange 2003 is a new feature for us. It enables me to access my Outlook e-mail, calendar and contacts from remote sites, with almost as much depth as I have while in the office.

E-talk to me

The technology that allows us to communicate seems to be constantly changing, faster than anyone can talk or type. The pocket protectors of the last century have been replaced as an accessory with cell phones and PDAs. Even cell phones can start to look so yesterday, compared with the advent of ever more hardware and software:

• Some of our staff members use a Blackberry (www.blackberry.com) to combine their cell phones, calendar and e-mail function in one device. The phone quality suffers a little, but the technology improves by the day. With the Blackberry Enterprise Server software, Exchange as well as outside e-mail reaches you. Get ready to be "on call!"

• For those with simpler needs, DataPilot (www.datapilot.com) by Susteen offers connective software that allows you to update your cell phone contacts list from your PC. I import six months of my Outlook appointments into DataPilot each day so I can use the simple calendar feature of my cell phone as a reminder. The process requires three steps now, but I'm sure a one-step process is close.

• Our telephone system uses Toshiba's "Stratagy" voicemail software, which links with Outlook by sending voicemails as "wav" files to a PC. You can listen to a voicemail through the PC and attach it to a client's file in Applied for later playback, and the system also allows faxes to be sent directly to your PC. I don't think Toshiba feels the same sense of urgency with their patches as Microsoft does, and that has been a problem once or twice.

Document management

The Microsoft suite of programs and other software applications enable you to make great-looking documents of many types. Wouldn't it be nice if you could take some of these different items–say, a Word document, an Excel spreadsheet, a PowerPoint slide and a PDF–and combine them as a single, printable document? Microsoft apparently hasn't thought about this much, but a number of other companies have come up with powerful document-creation options.

• FinePrint (www.fineprint.com) has devised a print driver that compiles different "jobs" and lets you rearrange and then print everything out at once. We have nearly eliminated our letterhead and proposal paper by using this program to make color "forms" with our logo on them. It has saved us considerable money, and the FinePrint suite of products grows by the day.

• Adobe Writer is the Cadillac of PDF creator programs, but the software autobahn is a competitive place these days. There are slicker and faster PDF creator programs out there, such as FinePrint's pdfFactory (www.fineprint.com). Since Adobe open-sourced its PDF code, the software business is flourishing. Adobe's Acrobat 7.0 is the new big kid on the block, and it has refined the "create, distribute, receive data" workflow using PDF forms. This version is a major step up for Adobe; I've had only a week to explore it.

• Creating PDFs is apparently "old hat," but the ability to make fillable forms from a PDF or any other document is newer and more exciting. When carriers post applications on the Web as PDFs, you have to print and fill them out manually. Acrobat 7.0 now features an automatic form-producing feature. Omniform Professional by ScanSoft (www.scansoft.com) is a 95% solution. You open a document in Omniform, and it identifies almost all your entry blanks and "auto-orders" them so your tab button moves smoothly through the pages. Convert the document back to a PDF and send it on its way; the process takes a few minutes, instead of a few hours. OmniForm has some work to do on recognizing or ignoring logos, so plan on doing a little reconstructive work.

• PaperPort, also by Scansoft, is a premier scanning enabler and document management program. Combined with a Visioneer StrobeXP 200 desktop scanner and any other scanner around the office, PaperPort allows you to drag a scanned job into any program you can imagine. PaperPort's Formtyper acts like a simple typewriter, great for quickly filling out forms. PaperPort 10 Professional has added a "Blank Page is Job Separator" feature so you can place scores of pages into the scanner's automatic document feeder with a blank sheet between each group of related documents. PaperPort 10 separates the sheets into individual "jobs" and shows them as PDFs on the desktop. I steer them into my Applied system's e-filing feature and I'm done. The developers at PaperPort are on the verge of enabling a "Bar Code is Job separator" feature.

• Because most scanners are not network-enabled, Remote-Scan (www.remote-scan.com) makes any scanner available on your network.

• Snagit (www.techsmith.com) is a screen-shot program we use to adorn our PowerPoint and Word office procedures manual, our presentations and our Outlook e-mails with clear, clever screen section shots. If you really push it, Snagit will record your mouse movements to make a little video instruction guide that you can e-mail.

• Jasc's Paint Shop Pro (www.jasc.com) is one of the most simple image enhancer programs. Best of all, you don't have to spring for Adobe's Photoshop to reap the benefits. It's been my JPEG cleanup-standby for years now.

• Dymo (www.dymo.com) makes one of the better label programs and printers. We started with one and quickly purchased three more. We place our logo and address on the shipping label template and we're off! Best of all, thermal printing doesn't require any ink or cartridge replacement. This is the end of sheets of labels.

At what one industry expert has called the "end of the hardware and technology 'build-out' years," our aim is shifting to custom programming and reporting solutions. Our technology budget for 2005 reflects this shift. Now that everyone in the office has two LCD screens, scanners at his or her fingertips, voicemail and Outlook integration and color printing options galore, it's time to trim the hardware expenditures and focus on software and integration.

We have spent the better part of a year custom-programming the CAT (Claims Analysis and Tracking) System using Cold Fusion, Access, Excel and FinePrint. The devil is in the programming details, but the final product has reduced a three- to 10-hour task to one that can be accomplished in less than one hour. We're saving about three fourths of one employee's time each year with this approach.

ModMaster Version 4 from Specific Software Solutions (www.specificsoftware.com) is a mighty tool for working with workers comp modification factors. We entered five years of loss data from 43 states to make sense of the interstate experience mod for a major client. The software lets you play "what-if" with claim thresholds, and that's just the start. The reports helped our client keep a huge contract. Specific Software can also rightfully boast to have the best technical assistance going.

Present and future tense

We are almost finished creating a Microsoft Access-based system that creates series of sequential renewal activities in our agency management system for our larger clients.

Since we shifted most of our processing work to the admin team years ago, entering future activities before the next expiration date has been a major headache. Our "MAC" (Milestone Activity Coordinator) system reduces a laborious, error-prone procedure to about three clicks of the mouse. The "ROI" on this project is unmatched!

Designing a basic "master" application for our architect & engineer professional liability program is essential. We're using Acrobat to design our own application, with every possible question. We can e-mail a fillable PDF application to clients. They fill it out and click on the "submit" button, and the data from each text box comes back to our agency and is saved as an "FDF" file (data only). Our risk manager then opens a company-designed application, with identical text box field names, and imports the data. Three mouse clicks, and an 11-page application is complete and ready to be e-mailed to the carrier.

Google has introduced many new features worth investigating (www.google.com/options/). "G-mail" is the slick response to Hotmail. Currently activated by "invitation only," it is pleasing to the eye and contains common-sense navigation menus. Picasa is Google's foray into photo and image viewing. Do a one-time scan of your PC's image files, then let it monitor your PC and your network for images. The desktop display and organization of these images and scanned documents is truly innovative. Check out the Timeline feature! Maps.google.com also can replace the stiff Mapquest maps and driving directions.

My latest interest is Windows Sharepoint Services, which came free (upon our request and download) with our new Windows Server 2003. This program, built for smaller business environments, is self-described as a document management and collaboration system. It is built around FrontPage 2003-type Web pages and designed specifically for in-house use. To understand its functionality, imagine every nifty toolbar command from every Microsoft program, combined into one browser-based environment. Larger businesses can purchase Sharepoint Portal Services.

What will the next year hold? Will your PC start up as quickly and easily as picking up the telephone? I doubt it, but I'm certain there will be plenty that will amaze us–and that we can use.