Are you planning to head up to the local office supply store and grab a scanner and start converting all your documents to a digital format? Did you do any planning ahead of time?

I know, you may think you only have a few documents to scan. I’m saying make sure that is accurate, take out all of the documents you plan to scan and see the pile.

• Is it a couple inches high?
• Is this the only batch you’re going to scan?
• Are you going to want these scanned in to Word? If so then OCR validation is incredibly important, and are you going to do that manually?

The point I am trying to make is simple actually, and that is that as humans we tend to minimize a lot of tasks and deny how much there is to be done. So follow this questionnaire to help you decipher exactly how big, or small, your document conversion project is and how it is going to get done.

1. Is this a new project or are you attempting to maintain an existing project?
2. How many sheets of paper, front and back, do you need to convert? Write down both how many to get started and how many per month to maintain your paperless office project.
3. Where will the digital format of these documents get stored?
4. How much security is needed for the stored documents? Outline the levels of security and put names within each level.
5. Who will do the scanning?
6. Who will do the verification that the scanned documents are accurate?
7. What software will you use to manage the digital documents?
8. How will the existing paper documents be handled after the completion of the conversion?
9. Who will manage and do Step 8?

There are just 9 steps to get you started in creating a much clearer view of your project, but even more importantly these steps will help you define the level of hardware you need to take on your document conversion project. A project of 100 documents per month will need a different scanner than the company that will be converting a warehouse of existing documents and 100,000 new documents per month.

The leaders in the document conversion hardware field are Bowe Bell & Howell, Canon, Fujitsu and Kodak fitting the needs of every size company project. The software you decide to use to manage your documents will also have an effect on the hardware you select, as not every scanner is compatible with all document conversion and management applications. That is why it is SO important to go through the 9 steps listed above; even if you cannot answer every question you now have a starting point to work with a professional company.

The above list was developed with the help of Digital Storage Solutions out of Long Island, New York. They specialize in document conversion for small businesses all the way up to enterprise level corporations. Be prepared before you speak with any conversion company.

Fast and easy retrieval of you information is critical to your business success. And your documents, both on hard drive and paper, are the lifeblood of your organization. So it makes sense to preserve them for any eventuality. But should you try to do it yourself of find a professional firm to do it for you? Read on to find out.

Document Storage: Why You Should Outsource

Fast and easy retrieval of you information is critical to your business success. And your documents, both on hard drive and paper, are the lifeblood of your organization. So it makes sense to preserve them for any eventuality.

But whether your documents are on paper or in electronic form, your data can still be at the mercy of natural or man-made disaster or hard-drive failure. Such loss could cripple your business so it’s essential to have an effective back-up system in place. So how to do it?

Transferring you paper documents and hard-disk data to optical media is the first step. This allows easy retrieval of any information you need. With an efficient indexing system, just pop the disc into the drive and voila. No need to search through dusty storerooms and cart out heavy boxes.

Once you’ve decided to go ahead and backup your critical data, you have to decide whether to do it yourself or outsource to a professional company.

It really depends on the volume of documents you have to work with. But considering the importance of your company information, it makes sense to bring in a professional firm for the following reasons.

Firstly, they’re up-to-date on the latest and most effective methods of data storage. For example, perhaps you’ve already backed up some of your hard disk data to standard Cd’s. After all, they last forever, right? Unfortunately not. Some statistics on the shelf life of recorded Cd’s might shock you. Unless you take great care, standard CD/DVDs can degrade to the point of being unreadable in as little to 2-5 years. Professional data storage firm will be knowledgeable of the latest media such as the latest Kodak Gold discs which offer effective lifespan of 80-300 years.

Another important reason to outsource to a document imaging solution provider is that their staff are trained and knowledgeable experts in data conversion. Scanning workflow, for example, is a complicated undertaking, especially if large volumes of documents and deadlines are involved. This really needs an expert’s touch. Solution providers also offer data entry services to key-in important meta data from documents to create a searchable database of your paper.

Then professional firms have the state-of-the-art equipment to handle any kind or size of job. The resulting efficiencies lower production costs which leads to lower costs for you. Buying, installing such hardware yourself and then training you own staff in its use would be prohibitively expensive and time-consuming.

In addition, a solution provider will manage your entire document conversion project. This means there’s no need to tie-up any of your own resources in the conversion process. Such projects can be complex, requiring needs assessment, planning and estimating before the actual scanning begins. And the imaging company’s staff can work on-site on your own premises so there’s no need to your confidential documents to leave the building.

%

It is said that approximately thirty to fifty percent of the cost of scanning your pages is caused by making your documents ready to scan including manual labor and data entry. You are able to greatly reduce the costs of scanning documents by simply making them scan ready.

The preparation for scanning your documents includes removing staples, paper clips, post its, as well as any torn pages. This process is similar to what you would need to do if you were putting your documents into an auto-feeding copier. Once this is accomplished your documents are now ready for automatic scanning and bar coding.

Automatic batch scanning is the high speed production process to scan a large amount of pages and index documents at the same time it is scanning. You are able to capture Meta data from barcodes to save additional energy costs.

Barcode recognition is used when indexing your documents automatically. This process indexes and creates different document types from bar-codes sheets which are inserted into your document files, folders, and document groups during the preparation process.

There are many benefits involved in outsourcing back file conversion. The main benefit is that you will no longer need to bring in an additional employee just to handle the scanners. This is not only going to save the hourly or salary of the employee but also will cut out the costs of benefits on a yearly basis. This also means that you won’t have to train any additional employees.

Another huge advantage to outsourcing back file conversion is that you will save a lot of wear and tear on your scanning equipment. Many people don’t realize the costs that are involved when it comes to scanning a high number of documents. Software and hardware vendors will sell software to a company at the highest price and offer broad training which applies to the purchased hardware or software.