A lot of businesses are dealing with document problems. And I don’t just mean really general problems with documents. I mean problems with their documents being everywhere!
A lot of business owners are now looking into converting their records to digital format.Keeping hard copies all stuffed together somewhere isn’t that safe if disaster strikes. And it’s not very convenient when you need to collect or browse them.
But digitizing isn’t exactly this super easy task that takes a few moments, is it? There’s an incredible time demand at hand here, and that’s one of the biggest problems this process poses. It also requires a heck of a lot of equipment. It may be equipment that you have to hand - after all, offices usually have their fair share of scanners and computers. But can you afford to let them all be in use at once for this task?
This puts a lot of strain on business owners. After all, surely you can imagine just how many documents a business can accumulate in a pretty short amount of time. It’s a lot of digital processing to go through. What companies tend to do instead is they won’t digitize their old records, but will instead choose to start digitizing going forward.
So let’s say you take this route, and begin to scan new documents. You’ve not really solved the original problem; you’ve merely prevented the company from making it worse in the near future. Laudable, but you still have a huge backlog of work to do. In addition to this, you’re going to have records that are either on paper or digital - consistency problems, much? If it’s really that tall a task, then bulk document scanning can be outsourced for convenience and speed.
But why put all this effort into this in the first place? Is having all those documents to hand really that bad a thing? Well, aside from all the space it takes up and all the waste that is often produced during the production of these documents, having hard copies of things can be undeniably helpful.
But the safety of your records is at risk. What if there’s a fire? Or a flood? Or a break-in committed by a burglar who eats paper? (Yes, the last one is far-fetched, but hey, it could totally happen. Technically.) Digital records basically get rid of all those problems.
The safety of those documents isn’t all you should be considering, though. There’s also the fact that going digital is what the majority of other companies are doing. Digital records are the norm in the business world. What if you need to communicate to another company about a specific record? What if you need to send them a copy? If you’ve not gone digital, then these processes can become very cumbersome indeed.
Digitized records also makes it so much easier for people - meaning your employees, colleagues, and yourself! - to actually access and use those records. Searching, browsing, retrieving… it’s all much more intuitive and faster when they’re digitized. Plus, certain scanning technologies and software can help you turn scanned document images into actual text, making finding the pertinent text you need about a hundred times easier.