iPads saving Massapequa firm thousands

For more than 10 years Island Associates of Massapequa has been taming unruly lawns and yards by adding irrigation and sculpting shrubbery. Recently, the company decided to tame its own unruly paperwork by going digital.

Douglas Connell started Island Associates in 1999 after graduating from high school in Dix Hills. Early on, he had two or three employees working on about 10 jobs a year. Now he's got 21 employees and is on track to top $1 million in revenue on about 125 projects in 2011: building pools, patios and pergolas; installing outdoor kitchens and fireplaces; designing landscapes for exterior living.

A run-up of jobs came with a run-up of paperwork: Changes in a day's plans meant wasteful trips back to the office; repeated copies made key forms unreadable; and digging up old documents to make sure customers had paid turned into a time drain.

Connell's staff once laid 4,000 square feet of pavers in a backyard when the homeowner wasn't around to say the blocks were the wrong color. The team had to rip up and start over. The $25,000 mistake was caused by an over-copied and therefore misread document.

Connell was working with Tom Mirabella, of small-business consulting firm Wingman Planning, to cut down on inefficiencies when the two tried an approach to the paper problem: Mirabella and his Wantagh-based team created software late last year that lets Island Associates upload contracts, project specs and photos to a secure website where employees can see all the information.

The availability and affordability of devices like iPads and smartphones are driving a surge in small businesses going digital, says Kevin Garton, chief marketing officer for Philadelphia-based The Neat Company, which manufactures hardware and software that helps companies go paperless. The biggest challenge, he said, is owners saying, "Oh, I didn't know I could do that!"

For Island Associates, a big time-waster came when a project manager got called unexpectedly from one job site to another: He'd have to go back to headquarters to pick up documents. Plus, when an old customer called and a salesperson wanted to pull out his file, it could take up to an hour to locate them.

With Island Associates' new software, the documents are scanned as soon as they're signed. The entire project -- software, scanning and iPads for project managers and salespeople -- cost close to $10,000.

As an added bonus, the new system has created a database for marketing. If a salesperson is meeting with a prospective client, he can call up details of a similar project on the spot. Promotional mailings are easier to target, too.

Employees who were wary of the new system at first, Connell says, are now on board. And he doesn't have to worry about errors from misread documents.

"One out of 10 jobs there was a mistake," Connell says. Going digital has "saved me tens of thousands of dollars."

TIPS FOR GOING PAPERLESS

Invest in a good scanner for high-quality versions of printed documents. Prioritize; you don't need to scan everything at once.

You can buy software off the shelf to manage your documents, or you can hire someone to build a system just for you. Another option: a free service like Google Documents.

Make backuups early and often. Store your backup drives off-site.

When you're ready to dispose of paper files, shred them to avoid sharing sensitive information.