IT

Document Scanning & The Paperless Office

Paperless Office SoftwareDespite the fact that we live in the digital era, many of us still rely on traditional ways of storing information. Every year we use more than 12.5 million tonnes of paper and cardboard, a large percentage of which consists of printed e-mails, business documents, and filing and storage systems.

If you run a company, chances are that you will have realised just how much space is taken up by paper. It is estimated that the average office workers goes through more than 10,000 sheets of paper a year. The following facts are also a good source of food for thought:

  • A regular four-drawer office cabinet can take up 10 square feet of floor space (now consider the rising costs of office floor space and you will soon realise the significance of this figure)
  • maintaining a filing system costs up to £930 per year, once we take into account the time wasted looking for misplaced documents and costs related to photocopying and filing.
  • In large companies, a document is lost every 12 seconds
  • In a large office, employees can waste approximately 4 weeks a year looking for lost or misplaced documents.
  • The average time that it takes to find a misplaced document is 18 minutes

The above figures clearly show that storing business documents in paper form can have a negative impact on productivity. Due to this reason, having in place an efficient and modern document management system is becoming increasingly necessary for businesses of all sizes. Because old habits die hard, in many cases this requires seeking help and advice from professional document management specialists. The trend nowadays is to move towards digital document management systems. But how exactly can your company benefit from them?

The advantages of digital document management systems

Currently, the total amount of space taken up by paper documents in a regular office is 15.3 per cent. If an office was to replace traditional document management systems by their digital counterparts, the space taken up would be reduced to 7.4 per cent. Over a five-year period, this figure could amount to 35 per cent. In addition, electronic-only filing systems can reduce the time wasted filing and looking for documents by 70 per cent.

Business owners who have implemented digital document management systems report other benefits, including improved shareability and process productivity, better record security and compliance, the ability to respond faster to client enquiries, improved data quality, a better chance to implement teleworking schemes, and reduced postage costs. Document scanning.

Document scanning is one of the most cost-effective ways of transforming organisations into paperless offices. Document scanning specialists can collect your records from your business location and securely transform them into high-quality digital files that are automatically backed-up to prevent data loss.

Your documents can also be indexed and organised in the most efficient way, depending on your organisational needs. Document scanning allows you to set customisable security preferences, so that only certain staff will have access to certain files or folders.

Copies of scanned documents can be provided on demand, whether it is online, using USB drives, or CDs, so that your staff always has access to important files. Just think of all the time you will save by not having to leave your desk every time you need to browse the company’s archive!

For a comprehensive list of the best open-source document management systems, follow this link.

If you have any questions, please ask below!