Document Scanning Company

Making the switch to a document scanning system is a commitment that is worth the effort in the practice of law.  Digital technology is becoming the norm in most businesses practices, and to resist moving forward can only impair the way your company functions. Paper files are becoming a way of the past and studies have established that using them wastes productive company time and resources. There are many risks associated with paper systems that digital files reduce or eliminate.

Up until recently the primary focus of document scanning and online document management has been to get medical practices and law offices into the 21^st century.  This was immediately followed by the financial and insurance industries.  Now that so many businesses are managing everything digitally, other companies may find it easier to switch to a paperless office.

 

As the American labor force becomes more accustomed to electronic documents, the use of paper in an office seems a lot more cumbersome.  Gone are the days when there was a line at the copy machine and a stack of manila folders on every worker’s desk.  Without even trying, today’s worker has gradually changed the way they manage paper documents in an office environment.

 

It’s hard to say when it happened, but at some point it become redundant to keep a file of paperwork for each client, when there was already an electronic file in existence.  It probably happened around the same time that people started “trusting computers” and realizing that their documents wouldn’t be lost in a computer crash.  IT professionals have become very adept at maintaining back-up files and ensuring the safety of network drives.  In most modern offices, client documents and important files are saved to a network drive instead of existing solely on a workers computer.  As a result, the average worker feels a lot more confident maintaining electronic document scanning without the requisite paper file. 

 

This shift has impacted various industries in different ways, but there are very few businesses that still operate in a paper-only model.  In the interest of efficiency, it appears that the American business owner is ready to follow the example of medical and legal office and embrace electronic document management solutions. 

 

Getting started with a document management solution for your office may require the help of a document scanning company.  These digital imaging professionals are the most effective way to make sure every employee is on the same page with the transition, and they can recommend the right software to securely manage employee document access.  In addition to actually document scanning and archiving your paper documents, most document scanning firms offer training for your employees. 

As an “institute for higher education”, it is impossible to imagine an admissions office without stacks of paper on every desk, and administrative offices are not far behind on the “paper trail”.  But with law offices, dental offices, hospitals and financial services businesses realizing efficiencies by going “paperless”, it seems like higher education is taking a bit longer to make the transition. One reason lag may be the fact that higher education offices are dealing with so many different external parties while also maintaining on-campus activities and all aspects of student life. 

 

Every document scanning project has to start somewhere though, and even an organization as complex as a university can find a way to eliminate mounds of unnecessary paperwork.  In a college environment, there are necessary evils, some of which may never be entirely eliminated.  These include financial aid forms, tuition bills, transcripts, contracts and order forms.  But with so many schools cutting their operating budgets, a document management program can save a university time, money and resources. 

 

For example, just the ability to implement an online tuition payment system will cut down on printing, postage and administrative time.  Sending out class schedules online and having students print them at home is another savings.  Even the application process has been digitized, and many schools have stopped accepting paper forms. 

 

With so many elements of a school’s administration going digital, it is important to have a back-end system in place to ensure the documents are accessible yet secure.  For example, a student’s personal records would have a different security level than their class schedule and syllabi.  In the admissions office, their transcript may be viewed by more administrators than their financial aid application, and so on. Implementing a full-scale document scanning management system for higher education institutions may seem like an arduous task, but the end result will be a much leaner and more efficient operation for school administrators, faculty and students.

 

By allowing users to store documents in a structured, digital environment, document management software helps small business owners to be more organized and flexible in running their business.  By including metadata to describe the contents of each document in the system, automated document management software provides much-needed structure and hierarchy for important documents, and puts them into a more intuitive workflow for user accessibility. 

Some of the latest document management programs are so sophisticated that they can automatically add Meta tags to office documents.  Known as “auto tagging”, this process works by dragging a document scanning  file into a folder that allows it to “inherit” the metadata information from other documents in the same folder.

Software programs such as FileHold will store and manage nearly every type of file, but even more importantly it can also search these documents for specific text and index them accordingly.  Supported documents include any Microsoft Office format, plus similar programs like Lotus, WordPerfect, Corel, Freelance and others.  It will also work with HTML documents and PDF files.

With so many employees “touching” a file, and sharing administrative rights, it may seem like revisions would be difficult to manage. However, document scanning management software can maintain a virtual paper trail, showing who viewed or changed it and when, and better yet, it will also retain all versions of the document so an earlier version can be recovered. 

Images can also be stored in a document management system, and they can be stored in their original, or native, format.  While it is recommended that users convert images to PDF files for optimum efficiency, it isn’t necessary to do that.  Just like text documents, images are indexed using metadata tags that include important keywords and phrases pertaining to the image.

Ever since the US government allocated money to encourage healthcare providers to start using EHRs, the rush has been on to hire service providers who can assist with this project.  Most doctors’ offices and medical centers lack the technology and training to manage the implementation of electronic health records, which has led them to outsource the document scanning, software development and archival storage of their paper medical charts.  Unfortunately, since many portions of these jobs are managed offshore, privacy concerns have become a major issue.  Recent HIPAA legislation may prohibit providers from moving forward with an EHR transition without compromising the integrity of patient privacy.
 
Outsourcing companies have their eye on capturing a share of the stimulus dollars that have been earmarked for the national transition to document scanning electronic health records.  Not only do they have the resources to do everything from software development to data storage; they are able to do this at much more competitive costs than some US-based providers.

 The National Health Service (NHS) has a goal of centralizing 60 million patients into EHR records within a very short time frame, which will require the use of outsourced transcription, scanning, storage and data management. Electronic health records are basically a patient’s medical records, stored in a digital format that can be retrieved by multiple users within a network of healthcare providers.

 In addition to the patient’s demographics and medical history, EHRs can also show their progress in a current illness, list of medications and immunizations, lab test results, x-rays, billing records and so forth. As a result, privacy concerns are valid.  Healthcare providers must be careful to ask the right questions concerning privacy when dealing with offshore companies, lest they put their patients’ confidential health information in the wrong hands. 

A professional document scanning company may have taken a mountain of work off of your hands by scanning and cataloging each document that was once taking up space in your office. They may have shown you how to catalog, store, retrieve and archive all of your newly scanned digital files and set you up with the software to do so. In many cases, you may have learned a lot about OCR scanning and searchable PDF files as well. But at some point or another, your new paperless office will need to be outfitted for the maintenance of continuous scanning and indexing of paper files. Law offices and medical practices are often challenged by this task, as much of their staff is still learning how to use the new software. Once your office has set up standards for digital storage and cleared away the excess filing cabinets, you will need to be prepared to maintain these new parameters over the long term. Below is an overview of the hardware requirements for a paperless office: Buy or lease a scanner that has the capacity to perform quick scans and can handle the volume of paper you expect to be scanning on a daily basis. The cost of this equipment will depend on whether your office can get buy with a desktop scanner or needs a full-service digital document center. What’s nice about a digital document center is that it can be used as a copier as well. Be sure the speed of the scanner you buy is fast enough to scan the volume of paper you will typically be scanning in a day, given your allocated resources. Scanner speed is measured by page-per-minute (PPM) rates. Do you need a document scanner that can do double-sided or oversized scanning? How about color scanning? Some of the latest equipment will scan directly from the scanner to a digital file, email, or document management system, which could make a significant difference in office efficiency. Most professional document scanning companies will recommend very specific equipment based on your budget and the needs of your office.

Online document scanning storage is quickly becoming the “norm” in the business world. It is a key element of any document management solution because it allows individuals to immediately retrieve documents from any computer that has an internet connection, but some businesses are skeptical about its usefulness in the management of accounting processes. How will online document storage improve the efficiencies of your company’s accounts payable and receivable departments? Here is one example to consider. Now, instead of rifling through several filing cabinets in search of an invoice or delivery document, an Accounts Payable clerk can quickly see all of the documents related to a statement, whether they were delivered successfully and who signed for the shipments. Not only will he or she be able to find these documents online in one place very easily, it will be easy to determine whether the bill is accurate. Practically speaking, every accounting department could streamline the way they store and retrieve documents, and improve company processes to achieve greater productivity. When all of the documents relating to an invoice are easy to find, it is possible to take advantage of early payment discounts and save the company a lot of money over the long term. Companies who are looking to implement an online document scanning storage solution across all departments often express concern about the security of the documents, but the technologically advanced encryption processes used in these programs make financial records much more secure than they would be otherwise. In addition, most businesses customize the accessibility of these documents to prevent unauthorized employees from viewing or altering them. If your company is looking for an online document management solution, be sure to include the accounting department in the first wave of the transition. The cost of going “paperless” is usually justified by the added security and savings that online document storage affords.

It doesn’t take much for an office to become cluttered, especially when the office is accustomed to keeping paper records of everything and holding onto old files for years. It wasn’t until so many offices started to invest in document scanning that office managers realized how much space they were wasting previously. Of course, office space management isn’t the only reason to consider going paperless. It does a whole lot more than eliminate mountains of paperwork. By choosing an experienced document scanning provider, the same papers that once took up space in your office will now become a part of your client database. This may seem like a tedious process, but using the latest document management software it is possible to catalog multiple documents simultaneously, while also making them “searchable” under several different categories. One objection that is common among small business owners is their fear that the data will be lost, or that it will fall into the wrong hands. However, with the right document scanning and storage, it is possible to keep your office files more secure online than they ever were in your office. Multiple back-up files are stored on a secure server that is private, hack-proof and perfectly safe. Safeguards can be added to make your data even more secure and compliant with privacy laws. Instead of paying employees to make copies and file documents, a document management solution will vastly improve their productivity. They will have more time to spend with customers and clients, and because every document is now at their fingertips, they will be able to offer much better customer service. A document scanning and storage solution is the best way to make your business more productive and service-oriented, which will ultimately improve your bottom line.

If your business is making the transition from paper to electronic filing, then you may be surprised at how difficult this transition is for some of your employees. Younger employees tend to grasp the concepts behind document scanning and online file storage. However, employees who have spent the bulk of their careers doing things the “old fashioned way” will be slower to figure out the system. For this reason, it makes sense to work with an outsourced document scanning company that can take some of the confusion out of the equation. Instead of being saddled with the responsibility of doing the actual scanning, people who use these files everyday can become involved in the administration of the files. Administration over files may sound like a boring job, but in reality it is quite interesting. It starts by categorizing and indexing the type of files that are most typically used, and deciding which files will need to be accessed by whom, and how they will need to be stored. Document scanning companies will usually install the proper software programs for you to make this process as seamless as possible. Another aspect of administration is file accessibility. Depending on the type of business you operate, it may make sense to use OCR scanning to make your documents searchable. OCR stands for “Optical Character Recognition” and it allows a computer input device or scanner to read the individual characters from a page and convert them into a text file. Not only does this allow for the “cutting and pasting” of scanned documents, it also allows for easier accessibility of your stored documents. If your employees understand file administration, they can usually adapt more readily to an electronic filing system. Be sure to ask which services your document scanning company offers, and how they can help ease the transition to a paperless office.