Published on January 10th, 2022 | by Sunit Nandi

How Paper-Intensive Businesses Benefit From Document Scanning Solutions

The era of the digitized workplace has transformed the practices of many offices from file cabinets and folders to cloud-based storage. However, despite the age of digital technology, there are still businesses that heavily rely on physical documents such as stationeries and other paper works.

There are instances where it’s still inevitable for businesses to store critical pieces of information through paper. These are invoices, legal contracts, tax documents, business cards, and personnel employment records, which are kept inside cabinets and boxes.

If this manual process continues, it’ll only make the task of accessing data more difficult for you and your clients. Thankfully, you can now store these space-consuming documents in the cloud and hard drives with the help of high speed desktop document scanners.

Furthermore, document scanning will help unlock tons of serious benefits that could bring a significant impact on your organization’s overall productivity. So, here are the ways your business may benefit from document scanning solutions:

1. It Maximizes Office Space

Once you implement document scanning solutions, most boxes and filing cabinets will instantly be removed, giving you more room to reuse for other important functions. By scanning your paper documents and storing them in the cloud, you’ll realize that you have more space to use than you might have previously thought. Also, instead of moving to larger office space, all you might need is to remove your bulky paperwork, and you’ll find out that you don’t even have to move at all.

Moreover, did you know that you can store more than a million scanned documents in a 64 GB drive? Now, imagine how many boxes and cabinets of files you can remove and the space you can get from those. That’s how document scanning solutions give you more functional space.

2. It Boosts Productivity Rate

Did you know that it can take you an average of 37 minutes to find a single copy of a paper document hidden in your file cabinet? That’s more than half an hour and could be used for more productive activities such as improving sales, assisting clients, and managing the company.

However, these 37 minutes are only wasted in locating a single file. Can you imagine the revenue lost during this entire period? And what if it’s happening most of the time? That’s why it’s more important to have all your documents scanned and stored digitally.

According to experts, it’ll only take you an average of 25 seconds to find a specific file under an organized document storage system. Before, you could only find a single document within 37 minutes, but now, with the help of scanning solutions, you can find at least 88 documents. Just imagine the boost of productivity scanning solutions may offer to your company.

3. It Reduces Costs

Printing entails a lot of costs such as ink and paper supply, filing cabinets, boxes, and other storing necessities, including warehouses. With the help of scanning solutions, you’re one step ahead of reducing paper-intensive works on your company by gradually eliminating all boxes and cabinets from your office.

By going digital, you don’t have to print or photocopy a document you need to submit. All you need to do is save the document and send it through e-mail, which is more efficient and less expensive.

4. It Protects Files From Natural Calamities

All paper-based documents are susceptible to natural disasters and catastrophes such as floods, fires, earthquakes, and more. Unfortunately, there’s no backup for paper records. Even if you photocopy or print similar documents, you’re still leaving them unprotected from unexpected disasters.

As you know, data is the lifeforce of every company, whether it’s physical or digital. It holds crucial information necessary to keep your business operations going. Failure to protect it from disasters may shut down your business permanently. Unfortunately, it has already happened to some businesses. That’s why it’s important to protect it at all costs.

You can prevent any significant information loss with document scanning solutions. Scanning and transferring your data in a computer system will provide you with additional backup files to bounce back quickly from any disaster. With this, you’ll be able to protect critical documents that build up your business operations such as financial documents, tax records, business licenses, and more, from natural disasters.

5. It Preserves Important Information

Historical paper documents become more fragile as they age. Excessive handling may only cause them further damages. But what if your business relies on the information they possess?

If your business heavily relies on important historical documents, it’d be best to scan them and create a digitized copy, which you can easily access anytime. Also, you don’t have to worry about other people using these delicate materials, especially those who have no experience handling historical items. This will help you preserve fragile documents and the information they contain in case a natural disaster happens.

6. It Promotes Faster Audits

Can you imagine yourself auditing and checking thousands of paper documents one by one? But first, is it possible to do it? Yes, it is, but it’ll waste a lot of time finding documents, including misplaced ones. To prevent this from occurring, it’d be best to have all your paper records digitized.

Having centralized digital document storage will save you a lot of time by searching directly the files you need to check and audit in a matter of seconds. Since digital files are easy to locate, it’d help you comply with requests, avoiding legal penalties and negative public exposure.

7. It Increases Security

Paper records are usually stored and kept under lock and key. However, is it really safe as you expect it to be? If this is left unlocked, will you be able to prevent someone from just looking around, especially if one of these documents holds financial records?

Unlike physical records, digitized documents can be protected with passwords and encryptions and safely stored in the cloud. The cloud-based storage system offers high-security services, depending on your network, documents, and credentials you want to protect.

In addition, every movement of documents in the cloud can easily be tracked, especially if you notice some suspicious activities such as sudden changes in records. Therefore, you don’t have to worry about someone trying to access your legal documents, client’s information, and other sensitive records.

Furthermore, a cloud-based storage system can be automatically backed up every 24 hours. This way, all possible valuable documents made within the day are immediately protected from potential threats.

8. It Promotes Transparency

Have you asked someone to process or work on a document that you’ll also need to finish on the same day? However, you found out that your request is still not done even after waiting for a couple of hours. Also, there are instances where some documents being processed and requested are actually outdated. These are just common situations happening to offices that rely too much on paper processing.

Processing paper documents slows down the operation of a company, especially if it requires the approval of different staff. With transparent digital records, you can easily share documents with everyone, check if they’re still updated, or follow up requests.

What’s good about this is you can do this task with a simple click of a button. You don’t have to waste time going to several departments just to get the answers you need. Also, you can exchange files online anytime and anywhere you want.

Furthermore, the best thing about promoting transparency is it improves the relationship between your staff and your partners. You make them feel more valuable and an important part of your business journey by being open to them.

9. It Promotes Green Environment

Are you concerned about the environment? If you are, you might need to lessen your dependence on paper products. Reducing paper usage will promote a sustainable and green environment for your company. It decreases your company’s carbon footprints, saving more trees and animals that may live there.

You may start by scanning all your forms and documents that can be processed and submitted online. This will significantly reduce your company’s printing, copying, and mailing activities. However, this alone might not be enough to help the environment. So, you might need to search for other ways that can help you remove any trace of paper on your company.

You may start by implementing electronic forms and purchase orders. If it becomes successful, you can introduce more digitized forms such as invoices and contracts.

Final Words

Document scanning solutions can help your business in many ways. It can maximize your space by helping you eliminate tons of boxes and filing cabinets, which allows you to do more and be more productive.

Also, it significantly reduces costs as you don’t have to rent for additional storage warehouse for your files. In addition, document scanning solutions protect your files by storing them in the cloud, preventing natural disasters and unauthorized people from accessing your files.

These are just some of the benefits of document scanning solutions. So, are you planning to go paperless? You may call a document scanning company or document scanner provider and ask what process best suits your business.

Tags: benefit, document scanning, paper-intensive, solutions

About the Author

Sunit Nandi I'm the leader of Techno FAQ. Also an engineering college student with immense interest in science and technology. Other interests include literature, coin collecting, gardening and photography. Always wish to live life like there's no tomorrow.