Regardless of living in the era of smartphones, wireless networks, e-mail and tablets, several businesses are still tied to paper. There are many reasons for this. Frequently, it’s other businesses or administrative organizations that you interface with that insist on paper forms or faxes. Occasionally, it’s just that old practices die hard.

There are numerous online software solutions to some of the old paper problems that don’t need complex infrastructure. Making a small technology investment now could save your business a lot of time and money, and reduce the wasteful cost of paper products.

1. Invoicera

Creating paper invoices can be immensely wasteful. Invoicera not only takes the paper out of your billing system, but can provide an organizational revamp. It can be accessed from any system with your account login and password, with no need for proprietary set-up. Once you log in to your account, you will have access to an online overview of your invoicing system which you can make use of to track time and expenses, create reports, and most prominently, invoice your clients.

2. CloudContacts

CloudContacts is all about your business associations. Send them your stack of 4 x 5 inch card stock and get back identical data that you can introduce into nearly any contact, e-mail, or CRM system, including Gmail, SalesForce and Highrise.

3. NitroPDF

With this app, you can effortlessly generate PDF forms that clients can view and complete with standard software like Adobe Reader and most web browsers. You can also modify an existing PDF document without resorting to printing and white-out.

4. EchoSign Online Contracts

EchoSign is a user friendly and web-based application for producing and archiving digital agreements. If you are already using a paper version of your business agreement, just upload it to EchoSign and enter the recipient’s mail address. They will get a copy of the document with a link where they can e-sign on the document.

5. Dropbox

Dropbox is an online file-sharing tool which is extremely simple to use. It saves all of your files on the cloud and can be accessed from anywhere using nearly any kind of device or operating system.

==== About the Author ====

This post was contributed by John Laster. He is an editor of  techieapps.com, a blog which caters the latest news in Technology, Gadgets, Social Media, online apps, product reviews, Gadgets, Blogging etc.