Business document scanning services provide companies with a host of benefits, from streamlined operating costs to tighter security and compliance. Overall, these benefits amount to greater profitability and reduced liability.
1. Streamlined Workflows
One of the main disadvantages of paper documents is that it takes time both to file them away and to retrieve them when needed. In some cases, searching for paper files can take as much as 30% of a given employee’s workday, so it’s cumbersome, to say the least.
Business document scanning services put documents into an indexed format, and technologies like OCR (optical character recognition) allow you to make your files fully searchable, so storage and retrieval is a snap. Less time is spent searching for documents, enabling more time to be spent actually using them in your business processes.
2. Easier Regulatory Compliance
Compliance with regulatory standards is often easier with document scanning than it is with paper files, particularly when it comes to protecting data and maintaining transparency. Digital files are safe from unauthorized users, and it can help protect important information from destruction, either accidental or intentional.
Also, certain documents need to be retained for specific periods—such as for tax purposes—which can get expensive if you have several years’ worth of files to maintain. Converting all that into digital format reduces the burden and makes records retention simpler to manage.
3. Reduced Storage Costs
One of the key benefits of business document scanning services is that it converts reams of paper into a compact digital format. Rather than spending the resources to store thousands of physical documents, you need only manage a small disk, hard drive, or server.
That means you won’t have to rely on bulky filing cabinets or pay for storage space just to maintain your records, nor will you need to spend excess time organizing them (or paying someone else to do so).
4. Simpler Data Security and Access Control
Protecting paper documents—and the information they contain—is a challenge. You need to ensure each filing cabinet is secured against unauthorized access, from locks and keys to surveillance. All that takes money and careful planning, and it can be difficult to keep it consistent.
Physical document security also requires expensive hardware, including locks and cameras, and even then, preventing—and tracking—unauthorized access isn’t always possible.
Document scanning can save on many of those expenses since digital storage is easier to safeguard with passwords and user accounts. The costs are lower, and it’s straightforward to monitor.
5. More Reliable Disaster Recovery
In addition to tighter data security, business document scanning services makes disaster recovery easier as well.
Duplicating key documents can take time, and it challenges security measures even more since you have to protect multiple repositories for your paperwork. With document scanning, it’s easy to create backups of your digital documents that are stored in disks, hard drives, or the cloud.
By keeping your paperwork in digital format and creating backups that are independent of your business’s physical infrastructure, you’ll protect it from floods, fires, and other disasters, so it’s simpler to recover.
6. More Time for Core Business Functions
With the streamlined workflows produced by document scanning, you’re able to devote more time and energy to core business operations. Rather than using resources to manage paper, your employees can devote effort toward doing their jobs. That means less waste, improved productivity, and ultimately higher profitability.
7. More Square Footage to Use
For offices devoting square footage to large filing cabinets, scanning your documents and storing them in digital format allows you to free up the square footage those cabinets take. This can be especially impactful for smaller businesses with minimal office space.
Rather than use up your limited real estate with paper storage, instead devote it toward more important things, such as the equipment or personnel who keep your business running.
At the very least, business document scanning services can make your workspace more easily navigable and less cluttered.
8. Environmental Friendliness
When it’s no longer needed for business operations, the paper should be disposed of, which usually involves throwing it away. Paper can be recycled, of course, but not all the waste sent for recycling actually gets processed. Often, it ends up in landfills or being disposed of in other ways.
As such, it’s best to reduce waste as well. Not only does it keep trash out of landfills, but it also helps conserve natural resources, including trees and fuels used in creating and shipping paper products. By transitioning to digital format, you reduce your reliance on paper in the future, essentially eliminating waste and helping the environment.
9. Sheer Convenience
The final benefit of business document scanning services is the basic convenience it offers.
It’s effortless to navigate a workspace without bulky filing cabinets or paper clutter, and work, in general, is easier if you don’t have to devote a few hours every day toward searching through files. The result is fewer frustrations for your employees and an overall more pleasant place to work.
Comprehensive Business Document Scanning Services & Solutions
Ultimately, the revenue you invest in business document scanning services can yield tangible benefits for your organization.
Curious to learn more about how the price of scanning documents compares to the benefits?
