If your company is ready for a digital transformation, your next step is deciding whether to outsource document scanning or manage it in-house. While scanning company documents yourself may seem more convenient, it can become a nightmare, especially if you produce a large number of documents.
Outsource document scanning services can help your business navigate the complexities of the document scanning process while saving your business money in the process.
Here are five ways you can expect to see a return on investment (ROI) when you outsource document scanning to a document scanning company:
Outsourced Document Scanning Services Saves on Office Space
Given that an average worker uses about 10,000 pages of paper (or four boxes) a year, a business with hundreds of employees can amass a significant amount of paper in a short period of time. A company with 200 employees can generate 800 boxes of documents in just one year. In five years, your business may have 4,000 boxes of documents that will need to be stored somewhere.
If you keep these documents on-site, you’re paying for office space that could be put to more productive use. Why pay top dollar—especially if you live in a high-rent area district—to store paper?
It’s not just boxes and file cabinets that take up a lot of space, either. Whether you install smaller scanners at strategic places throughout the office or centralize the process, you’ll need to establish workstations.
A bulk document scanning services provider can convert your documents into digital format, which not only frees up valuable space but allows employees to do their jobs more efficiently.
Save on Document Scanning Equipment
In order to satisfy your backfile or bulk document scanning needs, you need to invest in a high-performance, high-speed scanner that handles large volumes, features an automatic feed, and produces quality scans. A scanner that processes at least 100 pages per minute and more than 25,000 pages per day can range from $5,000 to tens of thousands of dollars.
Since you’ll be using your document scanner frequently, it needs to be durable. Otherwise, you’ll be spending money and wasting time on repairs instead of on important work. Even if you do purchase a high-quality scanner, your company will pay to have someone set it up, maintain it, and answer employee questions about using it.
When you outsource document scanning, you eliminate the need for your business to invest in costly scanning equipment, work-stopping maintenance, and frustrating repairs.
Outsource Document Scanning Saves Your Human Resources Personnel Time
If you scan in-house, you’ll have to hire additional employees or allocate these new tasks to current ones, taking individuals away from more productive tasks. Scanning company documents requires a number of skill sets, so in addition to paying someone (including training them) to use the equipment and software, you also need workers to organize the files, index and label them, create a retrieval schedule, and ensure they’re destroyed securely.
This work has to be done within the confines of government regulations and with regard to data security and privacy. Do any of your current employees have a solid grasp of compliance issues as they pertain to information management? If not, you will likely need to hire an employee or consultant to oversee the security process.
A secure document scanning company can provide guidance with compliance issues, as well as perform all the tasks required to accurately scan your data – and at a lower cost than if you were to do it in-house.
A Secure and Compliant Document Scanning Company Can Prevent Costly Fines or Lawsuits
Data breaches can be a public relations nightmare, and they can result in litigation and fines. Target, for example, was fined $18.5 million dollars for a 2013 data breach that impacted 41 million customers. Thousands of laws and regulations governing how companies should manage their data exist and learning how each of these applies to your business can be daunting.
The document scanning process must follow an audit-able chain of custody from start to finish. This includes using scanning software that centralizes your data in a secure environment, has audit controls and maintains consistency.
You also need to meet regulatory obligations during the classification, retrieval, storage, and destruction steps of the process. Secure document scanning companies have mastered this process, so they can help you secure your data and adhere to government regulations.
Create Better Efficiencies with Document Scanning Services
A digital document scanning system will only increase your ROI if it helps your business run more efficiently. Mislabeled or poorly labeled files can be lost or misplaced during the scanning process. This takes up valuable time and can impact customer relations.
During the 2008 housing crisis, bank employees blamed their inability to provide adequate customer assistance on poorly organized data. Prevent scenarios like this by creating document scanning solutions that make it easy for employees and stockholders to retrieve data instantly and effortlessly.
A secure document scanning company should be able to tailor products and document scanning services that help your business become more productive.
While you can certainly scan documents in-house, outsourcing scanning services makes more financial sense. It frees up valuable office space, doesn’t require an investment in pricey equipment and human resources, creates a secure environment for your data, and generates efficiencies. These are all factors that can help your company thrive and experience cost savings. Learn more in this complimentary eBook: Going Paperless? Avoiding the Legal Pitfalls of Digitization.
