For many of you who are familiar with Ontario record management this article may seem counter-intuitive to some document management solution offerings, and I’m sure if any document management company’s conversion services staff read this I would get an ear-full. But at the end of the day an Ontario record management company’s goal is to provide peace of mind, not pieces of paper, in other words, they’re problem solvers… no matter what the solution may be.
It happens around this time every year; companies’ fiscal year-ends are here and they look back at the cabinets and boxes of accounts payable and account receivable documents they have collected over the year and they want to scan them. Fantastic! I always applaud those organizations that want to manage their information electronically… That is if there is a business case for it. A typical sales call for this applications goes like this:
Ontario record management solution provider: “So tell me about the challenges you’re facing managing these documents in paper form”
Client: “Well we’re running out of room”
Ontario record management solution provider: “Aside from real estate, what other challenges are you facing? Do retrievals take too long? Are documents going missing? Are vendors not getting paid on time? Are clients stretching out their terms?”
Client: “No not really. It’s just space. By the time the documents get to these cabinets, their inactive (read: paid, received, processed, etc.).”
Here in lies the problem, and would explain why the majority of these clients nearly fall out of their chairs when they find out scanning 100 boxes is going to cost more then a $100.00… There’s no business case, there is no challenge or pain, and storage space will always be less expensive then scanning.
Read more about Ontario record management in part 2 of this blog post or for more information about Ontario record management, contact MES Hybrid Document Systems.