Provident was featured in an article about reducing waste and ‘going green’ in this month’s Security Sales & Integration Magazine.
Here’s an excerpt…
“We do lots of little things, but in this business it is the little things that add up,” says Mike Jagger, proprietor of Provident Security in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Provident also adheres to an extensive recycling program to dispose of transformers, batteries and other industrial refuse, along with common office materials. But Jagger is most proud of his company’s “paperless office” initiative. With more than 200 employees and 4,500 customers, the full-service security provider until recently consumed huge amounts of paper. No more. The essential design of a paperless concept is that office automation renders paper redundant for everyday tasks such as record-keeping and bookkeeping.
Each work space at Provident is outfitted with a scanner and the employee mandate is to move paper into the digital mainstream where it can be accessed on a central network repository. “It has an unbelievable impact on efficiency,” Jagger says, “but it also eliminates an incredible amount of paper waste.”
Click here to read the full article.
While we’re proud of how far we have come over the past couple of years in reducing waste at our office, we’re working very hard to push the paperless initiative much further.
The first major paperless milestone was to eliminate all client files… which was no small task. We invested in new storage servers as well as desktop scanners for every workstation that dealt with paper. In November 2007, we were finally able to remove the last of our filing cabinets from our Operations Centre. Now, every client contract, file or other paperwork is stored digitally… resulting in both less physical waste as well as much greater efficiency.
Our next major ‘paperless’ goal is to eliminate paper invoicing by April 30th, 2009. To that end, we’ve already started sending electronic statements. Our web design team, led by Ryan Sutton and Jeff Joseph have been hard at work building systems that will allow us to completely eliminate the need for paper-based invoices and statements.
Our first electronic statements were emailed on September 15th. This month, the statements will include the added feature of being able to drill down to see individual line items on specific invoices… soon, clients will also be able to view any corresponding installation, service, response or other notes that correspond to any particular invoice or statement item.
Over the next few months, the last remaining Ford vehicles in our fleet will be replaced with new, more fuel efficient Toyotas.
We know that we’ve got a long ways to go to be considered a ‘green’ company, but we’re proud to be recognized within the North American security industry as a leader in this regard.