As businesses and institutions worldwide make the push towards a “paperless” office, it is important for companies to understand the advantages and cost savings associated with the change. While many businesses understand the need to back up their digital data, little thought is given to the important documents tucked away in drawers or boxes throughout the office. Fire, flood, earthquake, or theft could lead to the loss of signed contracts or agreements as well as other sensitive information.
It can be hard to quantify the cost of the paper stored in filing cabinets until you are trying to find something. The time you spending filing or retrieving a document, as well as the space used by a filing cabinet or stack of boxes are just a couple of the cost contributors. Time spent looking for a document that has been misfiled or is being used by someone else can also be frustrating. There is also the cost associated with recreating misplaced documents!
Greg Mennegar, an expert in the document imaging industry, adds;
“if you have paper intensive processes in your business (accounts payable/receivable, loan or claim processing, etc), the costs of moving information from one knowledge worker to another grow exponentially. The inability to process information quickly can result in poor customer service, lost prompt payment discounts, delayed cash flow, fraud, and many other issues”
A paperless environment also allows you to instantly find and share information, as well as restrict certain users from accessing sensitive documents. Tools such as Optical Character Information (OCR) can also be utilized after scanning, as Greg explains;
“The information within the documents can be made searchable through the use of Optical Character Information (OCR). If you need to see all documents that contain a specific word, it is possible to quickly perform that search. OCR also allows information to be extracted from paper documents to feed claims & loan processing, accounts payable, order entry, and other business applications.”
As Greg told us, a lot of planning must be put into making the paperless push. Determining what to scan, how to separate and store images, and the image quality are all considerations;
“If a document is not indexed correctly, it can be impossible to find it. If image quality isn’t monitored, it may be difficult or impossible to read or reproduce.”
When asked about what to consider when deciding whether to buy a scanner or outsource the scanning, Greg recommends meeting with a professional scanning service;
“…Visit a professional scanning service bureau to understand the amount of process control that is involved in managing the scanning workflow process. In-house scanning can be disastrous if there aren’t controls in place to ensure that all documents are indexed properly and consistently. Scanning may seem easy, but when you have to manage thousands or millions of pieces of information, the opportunity for things to be done incorrectly is huge.”
If you do decide to scan yourself, speak with someone about your requirements to determine what type of scanner would be best. The scanner you choose is very important, so be sure to go with quality over price! Professional scanning services use machines that have very good image quality and can scan up to 150 pages a minute, dramatically reducing the cost per image.
Going paperless can have a huge impact on your company’s operations, with a number of efficiencies and savings businesses can take advantage of. Be sure to do your research to determine if a paperless environment would benefit your company!
- Jon Holewa
Phoenix Technology
Want to make the move to a paperless environment? Email us for more information!: info@phoenixtechnology.us
