
Bates numbering (also called Bates stamping) is used in the legal industry as a method to label and identify legal documents, for easy identification and retrieval. Nearly all American law firms use Bates numbering during the discovery phase of litigation, where a large number of documents need to be referenced and shared.
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If I were to ask some of you what you thought your most valuable asset is, what would the answer be? Your people, right? Your people make up the flavor, the culture of who you are as a company. They make the machine run. Without them, who would serve your customers? Continue reading “Your People Are Your Most Valuable Asset” »

This past week the Advance Network Services team was challenged with an interesting troubleshooting case that was outside the norm. A long-standing customer had placed several service calls throughout last year indicating that their multifunctional printer (MFP) would intermittently stop printing. To make matters more difficult it was also noted that the time of occurrence may be once every two months. Continue reading “Triage in Real-time” »
I was traveling on business last week and happened to sit next to a very friendly gentleman who struck up a conversation. He asked what line of work I was in and I was able to go through the electronic document aspect of digitizing files and processes. He was intrigued. “I could use something that would help me find all the documents we seem to lose on our server,” he said. “It goes into the black hole and I can never seem to find it again.” Nothing he said surprised me. We hear that a lot from customers. It’s hard to find documents once they are saved to a traditional server. That’s when we start talking about document management.
Continue reading “The words documents, server, and black hole are never good when used together” »

Here at Advance we are always searching for new ways to automate processes and become more efficient with our day to day tasks. We also like to help our customers do the same by automating simple things like printer deployment and software installations when possible. Continue reading “Leverage Technology for Automated Deployment” »

And so I begin my 20th blog, wrapping up my first year of blogging. Who would have imagined that I would have had 19 blogs worth of things to say already? As I reflect, the truth is that it is actually easier to come up with interesting topics than I would have ever guessed. Why? Because Advance – The Document Specialists is in an industry where things are changing. Certainly, you could make that case for any company in a technology related business. However, the “copier” industry is evolving, through some very dynamic changes, and that gives us the opportunity to continually share information about the growing list of ways that we are able to help our clients. Continue reading “From Hardware and MPS, to Document Management and Network Services” »

Some days are better than others. In December I fielded a strange request, a client that I was unfamiliar with called in to cancel their service contract on their fleet of old equipment. The message was relayed to me on the road and I immediately called the account back without having a chance to dig into the files. The young man on the other line quickly connected me to his boss, the CFO of this nonprofit organization. Let’s just say I was quickly brought up to speed on the recent history of our two firms and it was not a warm and fuzzy message. I set up a meeting for the following morning with Tony (the CFO) and went into research mode (History major). Not a great way to end the day… Continue reading “Do What You Say and Say What You Do” »

There are many things that make Advance – The Document Specialists the ideal choice for your organization’s document workflow solutions. One of which is our own in-house leasing option. We are one of a very few, if not the only dealer in the region, to offer true in-house leasing. Other companies in this industry claim to offer their own leasing by adding their company name to a third party leasing document. However, it is certainly not the same. At Advance, all of our in-house leases are handled 100% by Advance at our corporate headquarters in Cockeysville, MD. Continue reading “The Benefits of True In-House Leasing with Advance” »

I was cruising for a new business book to read last week and I came across Change is Good…You go First. I have no idea if it is a good read or a bad read. The one review was a little mediocre. However, I had to laugh at the title. It pretty much sums it up for most of us. We advocate change because that’s what you are supposed to do. But deep down inside most folks are waiting for the other guy to go first. Continue reading “Change or Die – from carbon copies to EHR software” »

Throughout the past few decades, Advance has been advertising in the Baltimore television market. There are commercials featuring Alan receiving a service call in the middle of the night, Milly the Advance mascot shredding a fax, and Jeff rocking out on the drums. These commercials have created an amazingly recognizable brand – one which I remember thinking “it’s a marketers dream to walk into a company with this much brand equity” when I first was offered my job. Continue reading “TV and Pre-Roll – evolving with your audience” »



