Stupid coworker. My system is better, faster and less errors
Posted: November 2 07, 11:19 am
One of my department's projects is taking all of our contracts back to 1989, and scanning them to a pdf. Some have been scanned over the years, some have not. We also need to give each file a universal name, which means renaming all of them.
We recently took a 44 page (legal size) spreadsheet of our entire database to the hard files and updated everything we can for an eventual merge with our database. We were told later to scan in the contracts for a new platform that IS is developing.
I started organizing a few weeks ago before things got crazy and we had to put the project on hold. My system was:
Using the database spreadsheet find an entity with a signed contract. Look for that file as already scanned in. If it is, rename the file (with info from the updated sheets). When this is completed, all of the files in the "scanned contracts" folder will have the correct name. I only got through about 10% of the files before the project got put on hold.
If the file is not already scanned in, I enter the needed information into an excel spreadsheet that I made. I type in that info, so when I go to scan the contracts in, I have a definitive list of what I need to scan in. You know, so I don't make duplicates.
My coworker has taken over this for now. Her methodology:
Scan in EVERY CONTRACT. (we have thousands) Then check to see if it is already in our "scanned contracts" folder, and rename it... all the while, the contracts already scanned aren't named correctly. Instead of going down a list of contracts and renaming them all at once, you have to skip back and forth because one is correct, three are wrong, the next two are correct, the next one is wrong... and so on and so forth.
She apparently can't grasp the concept of my method. Make a list of what you don't have to save time. She argues, (but you'll have to go through the database twice, once to see what you don't have, and once to get the information to name the file). My response: OR you could do it all at once, because that's faster, you're going down a list instead of skipping around, and you have something you can make a checkmark on, to ensure accuracy.
Seriously, it took me about 8 minutes to come up with this system and create the spreadsheet. Thus, it can't be that complicated. Make a list of what you don't have to save time.
We recently took a 44 page (legal size) spreadsheet of our entire database to the hard files and updated everything we can for an eventual merge with our database. We were told later to scan in the contracts for a new platform that IS is developing.
I started organizing a few weeks ago before things got crazy and we had to put the project on hold. My system was:
Using the database spreadsheet find an entity with a signed contract. Look for that file as already scanned in. If it is, rename the file (with info from the updated sheets). When this is completed, all of the files in the "scanned contracts" folder will have the correct name. I only got through about 10% of the files before the project got put on hold.
If the file is not already scanned in, I enter the needed information into an excel spreadsheet that I made. I type in that info, so when I go to scan the contracts in, I have a definitive list of what I need to scan in. You know, so I don't make duplicates.
My coworker has taken over this for now. Her methodology:
Scan in EVERY CONTRACT. (we have thousands) Then check to see if it is already in our "scanned contracts" folder, and rename it... all the while, the contracts already scanned aren't named correctly. Instead of going down a list of contracts and renaming them all at once, you have to skip back and forth because one is correct, three are wrong, the next two are correct, the next one is wrong... and so on and so forth.
She apparently can't grasp the concept of my method. Make a list of what you don't have to save time. She argues, (but you'll have to go through the database twice, once to see what you don't have, and once to get the information to name the file). My response: OR you could do it all at once, because that's faster, you're going down a list instead of skipping around, and you have something you can make a checkmark on, to ensure accuracy.
Seriously, it took me about 8 minutes to come up with this system and create the spreadsheet. Thus, it can't be that complicated. Make a list of what you don't have to save time.