With increasing awareness of the security and governance risks posed by physical Human Resources (HR) files, companies are looking for ways to efficiently convert all of their existing paper records into digital documents, in order to start down a new path that’s exclusively digital.

The question is, “what is the best approach?” In order to decide, we have to be clear on the goals of the project and the anticipated benefits. If the goal is simply to convert paper files to digital files, but not materially improve business processes, then there are several low-cost approaches. However, achieving a more meaningful business impact requires more than a simple conversion.