Mitigate risk and plan to succeed in the face of disaster with digital document management

Malevolent weather seems to have been the theme of past year. During the Alberta floods and the Ontario ice storm, many Canadian businesses experienced property damage that resulted in service disruptions lasting several days. The length of time it takes to re-open after a catastrophic event will determine the overall longevity of your company. Business Continuity Planning ensures that there are advance procedures in place to maintain or resume key operations quickly when disruptive events arise.

In its initial stages, BCP identifies internal and external threats that will affect the delivery of critical services and products to clients. However, businesses often overlook a key area of vulnerability: paper files. Losing important documents can hinder recovery efforts and increase costs. Not only does digital record storage provide additional security for your files, but gives management some flexibility in tailoring successful continuity plans. So why hasn’t everyone adopted digital records as part BCP? Let’s take a look at some of the misconceptions of digital record storage.

So your organization has made the decision to scan your paper files, turning those stale documents into useful digital content. You've decided to outsource the bulk scanning of your documents, but you have a lot questions before you're ready to send your files out. Questions such as:

Are you looking to bring more digital content to your patrons in 2014? Are you looking for solutions that are easy to use and will cut down on time spent by staff re-training users? If that's the case, here are three digital/scanning solutions your library may want to consider.

Every month our document scanning team converts over 5 million paper files into useful digital images. For us, document scanning doesn't mean feeding a handful of sheets through a multi-function scanner, it means high volume, high security and high accuracy conversion so you can focus on your core business activities.

If you’re a book enthusiast, news that libraries are going digital may leave you feeling weary. If you’re a library administrator, the concerns of staunch traditionalists may have you shying away from new technology. Fear not, going digital won’t turn your library into a cold, sterile environment from sci-fi future. Instead, it could help to highlight and improve many of the services patrons use on a regular basis.

Workflow and Office Automation can be Exciting... We promise.

Workflow, or office automation, is one of the most exciting and useful features available with document management software. I realize using the word “exciting” with the phrase “document management software” has probably got a few of you laughing, but hear us out.

Access information when, where and how you need it with document scanning

Why should we consider scanning our files?
There are several reasons businesses consider scanning their files; including:

• Space; paper filing systems take up a considerable amount of office space, space that could be better used by productive employees.

• Disaster Recovery Planning; no one likes to think about the worst case scenarios, but those who do are the ones who end up on top. Imagine a fire or flood happened in your office and you lost all your paper files tomorrow. What would that mean for your business? Scanned documents can easily be backed up and recovered from multiple locations with speed and ease.

• Productivity; employees spend about 40% of their time looking for information they need to make decisions. Searching through paper files is, to say the least, time consuming and unproductive. With document scanning your staff can find the information they need in a matter of seconds.

Electronic medical records allow physicians to access patient information. Just as with any other type of office, space is a precious commodity in medical practices. Yet many offices are arranged inefficiently, devoting more space to celling-to-floor shelves stuffed with manila folders than to patient seating. With an increasing number of general practitioners and family doctors reaching patient capacity, space and time saving measures have never been more important.

Are you questioning whether or not you can justify the transition from a paper based filing system to electronic document management solution? The real question should be “can you afford not to?” There are a lot of very expensive and unproductive soft costs associated with a paper filing system; so we ask you, is this really the best use of your staff’s time?

Employee Time Searching for Documents
A recent survey shows that employees spend 25% of their time just looking for information they need to do their job. On top of that, every week 42% of people use the wrong information to make decisions, requiring rework (read = more time, more money). An electronic filing system puts documents at the fingertips of every employee and manages version control, ensuring your staff are always working from the most current information.