Be ready for that lost documents nightmare

By Betty Stark

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Consider this scenario: You are on the road, flying from your home base to a distant city where you will make a major presentation to a key client. The documents you plan to distribute to your clients the next day, those dazzling new-services packets that will put you light years ahead of the competition, are safely stowed in a large box that was loaded into the aircraft baggage compartment.

Unfortunately, it wasn't. The box with your precious documents never made it onto your aircraft. It is on another aircraft, winging its way to another city, inadvertently misdirected by an overworked baggage handler. When you arrive at your destination, you will learn that you have no sales packets and a very serious problem.

What are your options right now? What resources can you quickly tap to avert total disaster? And how can you be smarter about avoiding this problem in the future?

If you are carrying electronic copies of your critical documents on your laptop, on a USB flash drive, on a CD, or if someone back at your home office can e-mail them to you or an accessible computer, you might be able to recreate most or all of your handouts by tapping into the equipment at your hotel business center.

There are several downsides to this option:

• Using business center services can be costly and quality can be inconsistent;

• The business center computers might not have the application that was used to create your documents;

• The business center printer might print black ink only and your documents must be in color to tell the story;

• The business center computers might be constantly in use by others;

• Your hotel might not even have a business center.

So, what do you do now?

Find out if the city you are in has a FedExKinko's (fedex.kinkos.com/locations/). There are over 1,100 FedEx Kinko's locations in the U.S, many of them open 24 hours a day.

Kinko's locations can sometimes do fast turnarounds on last-minute printing projects. Using their File, Print FedEx Kinko's software (a free download compatible with Windows XP and Windows 2000 at fedex.kinkos.com/fpfk/index.php), you can format your documents and send them directly to the nearest Kinko's, along with instructions for paper, cover stock, binding and delivery to you or your meeting location.

Look into other printing options, too. Franchise Services Inc.'s PIP Printing and Document Services Inc. (www.pip.com) and Sir Speedy (www.sirspeedy.com) have hundreds of independently owned and operated locations in the U.S. and around the world.

Here too you can use their online tools to send documents to a printing location for fast turnaround and delivery. They can produce documents of exceptional quality on a production copier at lower cost and in smaller quantities than traditional color press runs.

There are other options worth considering. Check out the local city convention center for office and printing services. In Denver, for example, you can make use of several office-related services at the "At My Office Business Center" located in the Colorado Convention Center (www.myofficeco.com/sys-tmpl/door/).

To find out what services are available from the convention center in your destination city, contact the local Convention and Visitors Bureau or check
this Web site: www.conventionbureaus.com for locations worldwide.

If you need to quickly find office supplies at your destination city, look for locations of Office Depot (www.officedepot.com), Office Max (www.officemax.com), or Staples (www.staples.com).

How could you have avoided this problem in the first place? Entrusting valuable documents such as meeting materials to the baggage compartment and luggage handling services of your airline can be risky at best.

Flights are routinely oversold (you might be bumped off the flight at the last minute, after your precious cargo has been sent off down the luggage conveyor belt), or the flight might be delayed or canceled.

Consider using the services of a delivery company instead. They will pick up your documents -- and luggage too if you want them to -- and deliver everything to your hotel or meeting location so you don't have to haul them to the airport with you.

Check out Luggage Forward (www.luggageforward.com), Sports Express (www.sportsexpress.com), and the Luggage Concierge (www.luggageconcierge.com). Ask about corporate and volume discounts, too. If you use the services of a local Kinko's, you can arrange to have your documents shipped direct by their FedEx operation.

And this brings up another point about planning ahead to avoid a repeat of the document disaster. If you routinely have meeting materials printed at the last minute, consider building in extra time. Knowing that your documents have been printed and shipped ahead of time and that you're boarding the plane carrying nothing more than digital files for Plan B will make that flight to your sales meeting a lot easier.


Betty Stark is a Madison travel industry consultant and business travel writer with 25 years' experience.

travelingwriter1@aol.com

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