A growing business is an exciting thing. Whether you’re looking at scaling up or have been increasing your scope for many years, there are many new horizons to explore. But expansion also comes with its downsides. Growth requires space, resources, and proper organization. And paperwork in all its many forms can be taxing on all three. The perfect solution for many is to take things digital. In fact, paper to digital conversion is the preferred way for many businesses to keep things organized and clutter-free. This article will unpack what you need to know about this rigorous process.

Why You Should Go Digital

There are many reasons to recommend that your office converts some or all of its paperwork to a digital format. Thanks to modern scanning technology, it’s a task that’s never been easier.

  • Cost efficiency – Let’s start with the most important benefit: cutting costs. Documents eat up a large section of any budget through printing, paper, and stationary costs. What’s more, paying for somewhere to store them can also get expensive. Save on printing costs and free up physical storage space by going digital.
  • Preservation – Physical documents decay and are fragile. Your precious files can yellow and fade with age, or be lost in a fire or other disaster. Taking documents out of the physical space removes all the natural hazards that can result from improper storage and the march of time.
  • Tighter security – Not only are digitized documents safe from damp, but unwanted access, too. Converting your files makes them easy to password protect, which restricts access to only selected users. Even better, document activity records can provide clear tracking of which users have accessed files, and when.
  • Better organization – Piles of documents accumulated over years can make finding one a huge undertaking. What’s more, categorization methods that have changed over time can make some searches downright chaotic. After digital conversion, files can be properly indexed, and documents are ready for retrieval on any device, anytime, regardless of location. There’s less human error too.
  • Increased productivity – Time spent working on documents accounts for 3% of productivity lost in an organization. Paper to digital conversion means employees no longer have to dig through mountains of files for one document. So, document searches are faster and more resource-efficient. Digital documents also enable collaboration and shared access in ways that paper documents can’t.

The Challenge of Paper to Digital Conversion

Of course, scanning, indexing, and categorically organizing warehouses full of documents is no small task. There are many challenges involved, mostly arising from attempting this mammoth undertaking on your own:

  • Costs – High-quality imaging scanners don’t come cheap, especially those needed to handle large volumes of documents. Combine that with the manpower resources needed to assemble all the files needing digitization, and it adds up to a lot of lost productivity.
  • Inconsistency – Captured documents need to be labelled consistently, clearly imaged and properly indexed, both for efficient access and to match data protection requirements.
  • Training – Staff may know how to file documents away, but not necessarily how to properly sort and index them once they’ve been scanned. What’s more, high volume imaging devices aren’t as intuitive to use as an office scanner.
  • Upkeep – If you’ve bought a scanner to digitize documents, it’ll need to be regularly maintained and occasionally repaired. For once-off or irregular document conversions, the costs can quickly outweigh the benefits.

While it’s possible to convert documents in-house, making use of the experience and tools of a professional imaging company is likely to be a far more cost-effective and stress-free procedure. The process these experts have for getting things done may be complex, but delivers much better results.

How Paper to Digital Conversion Works

As with any undertaking, an effective document digitization process will follow set steps to ensure consistency and quality. While every professional company will have their own specific way of doing things, the broad strokes of the process are usually the same:

Initial Assessment

Every company is different, and so are its digitization needs. The right expert knows that an initial consultation is vital to understanding the scope and nature of the job. The key discussion points should be:

  • The type of files and the way they should ideally be organized.
  • The volume of the files to be digitized.
  • Projected and desired timelines of the process.

It’s not necessary to have a complete picture of how your digitized files should be organized to start with, as most services can supply templates on demand. What is important is to ensure that the imaging company is fully compliant with data protection practices and adheres to some form of industry compliance.

Document Preparation

The next step involves preparing the documents for scanning. Files need to be properly gathered, organized, and prepared for imaging. Any necessary metadata, such as titles, dates, and serial numbers, must be compiled, along with any methods for retrieving scanned documents, like barcodes or indexing.

It’s also important to confirm whether the imaging process will be carried out on-site, or at the premises of the imaging company.

Imaging

With all the preparation complete, it’s time for the main event. Documents must be handed over carefully, and digitization should be carried out with frequent quality control checks. The length of this process will depend on the volume of files and the capacity of the imaging tools. Higher-resolution files, like blueprints, will require longer scanning times to preserve quality.

Document security during the scanning process is essential. Wherever the process might take place, ensure the storage spaces are free from dampness and that access to your files is restricted.

Digital Organization

With the files scanned, they are then properly indexed and organized according to the agreed methods. Delivery should take place in a secure way. Insist on quality control and reviews to check for accuracy.

If you don’t have one already, a document management system that can provide easy and secure access to these files must be set up. Finally, all digitized files should be backed up somewhere secure in case disaster should ever strike.

The Right Digitizing Partner

It’s no small thing to compress shelves of documents into gigabytes or even terabytes of data on hard-drives. It’s definitely a good idea, but certainly not easy to achieve. Not without the right partner, that is. IMR Digital has been in the document conversion business since 1978. Our expertise and cutting-edge imaging equipment save you the cost of scanning your files yourself and provide easy access to your digital documents whenever you need them.

If you’re in Philadelphia, Eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, or Delaware, then let us be the ones to take your business digital.