In order to take full advantage of the benefits of digital technology, you are likely considering digitizing your company's archives. However, you are wondering whether or not taking this step will fit into your budget. Fortunately, you don't have to have a multi-million dollar budget in order to successfully digitize your archives. Here are the three steps that you need to take when digitizing archives on a budget:
1. Plan out your archive digitization needs
Your budget is a plan. In order to make digitizing archives fit into this plan, you have to make the digitization process itself a plan of its own. Although your plan will ultimately conform to your organization's unique needs, certain elements should always remain constant. To this end, be sure to take the following steps:
Consider your access needs
Digitizing archives doesn't automatically grant your team access to the archives when they need to retrieve them. Although it is better than physical versions, digital archive management can be extremely chaotic if you don't plan it out.
Think about security
Allowing your digitized archives to lack security is one of the most expensive risks that you can take. A single security breach can result in the theft or destruction of your archives, or even a direct attack on your organization's finances. This is why archive security should be among your first considerations when planning out the management of your digitized archives.
2. Stop wasting money on extraneous records
One of the best ways to cut back on monetary waste is to literally cut back on your waste.
Reducing your waste begins with getting rid of redundant physical versions of your archives. If you don't do this, then digitizing archives is partially a waste. This is because physical archives are much more expensive to store than your digital archives – even if you don't use them for years – and managing them wastes one of your most precious assets: your employees' time.
Even in digital form, outdated or unnecessary records will cost you money in the form of wasted time, storage space and general management costs.
Reducing this waste will help you actually save money for your budget when you make the switch to digital archives.
3. Invest in a customized archive management solution
Once you understand your archive digitization needs, it is time for you to invest in a system that can run your digital archive. This should not be an arbitrary decision, because your archival needs are unique; in order to meet those unique needs, you will need a custom archive management solution.
In order to obtain your custom archive management solution, you will need a partner who can create it for you. The best partner organization to connect with for this is an experienced document management company. The best among this this type of company have been a part of the development of archival management processes for scores of years. In addition to constructing a custom archive management solution for your unique needs, they will educate you about how to enhance your own internal workflows for more effective management of your digitized archives.
These benefits reduce the overall cost of managing your digitized archives, because fewer man hours will be wasted stabilizing the management process, and you will only pay for the management resources that you actually need.
Make the switch to digital archives affordable by preparing for it
Even with your organization's limited budget, digitizing your archives is well within your reach. All you need to do is develop an effective plan, get your unnecessary documents out of the way and build the right partnerships.