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The Value of Document Scanning

By Mark Rigsbee | Posted February 11, 2014

The advent of affordable digital document management solutions has promoted business around the world to convert their archived and current paper documents into easily-stored digital images. Digital scanning not only frees up a huge amount of square footage that would otherwise be devoted to boxes and file cabinets, but it also enables lightning-fast computerized searches. However, the act of scanning these paper documents needs to it comfortably into your operational routine if you want to save time as well as space. You can either do all your scanning in house, or you can outsource it to a third party.

Which Makes More Sense for Your Situation?

In-house document scanning gives your company an affordable way to image your paperwork incrementally as it comes in, either through individual workstation scanners or through one or more multi-function printing/scanning devices in the office. If you plan to switch over to a “paperless” office, this strategy makes perfect sense, but it gets cumbersome if you’re also trying to go back and scan mountains of archives. Large companies who want to handle all their scanning in house may need to set up a dedicated imaging department just for this purpose.

Outsourced scanning takes the entire document imaging burden out of your employees’ hands — a critical benefit if you already have an understaffed, overworked office team. You can simply send all those old papers to a scanning service for quick, efficient scanning before dumping the images into your ECM system for ready access by users. You can also keep sending documents to the scanning service on a periodic basis.

If you have both a large backlog or papers as well as a need to go paperless, the most sensible solution may be a combination of these two scanning strategies. Whichever method(s) you choose, you’re sure to enjoy the efficiency of the “digital file cabinet!”

This entry was posted in Document Imaging, Document Scanning by Mark Rigsbee.
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