What are the Benefits of Document Scanning and Management

Document Scanning is a simple concept often clouded in mystery but it really is easy to grasp the basics and this guide explains what you should look for and why.

Can you remember a time when all your music was on LP's or CD? You could meticulously categorise this in alphabetical order or perhaps by genre. The pride of many a music collection were rows upon rows of LP's or CD's In no time at all though the order was "challenged" LP's and perhaps CD's got scratched and started to go missing or they weren't where you expected them to be. Now music can be stored on tiny but powerful personal music players and you can create a playlist of your favourite artests and browse in any order you like. Everyone seems to have some brand of player or another.

Adding more music is simplicity itself and if you need to share your music with friends, around the house or office you can do so.

Now back to business... Document Management is a bit like this but for your everyday business information. Everything can be centralised in one place and finding a letter, delivery note or bank statement is so much easier if there is one electronic copy that can be viewed whenever you want to, anywhere and within a few clicks of your mouse.

You may be happy with your current filing system but one thing is for sure. You will improve producitivity and gain a competitive edge, particuarly in speed of customer response by employing Document Management? Below we share just some of the major benefits but if we had to summarise in one line......It's all about

INCREASING PRODUCTIVITY & PROFIT.

Think about how you create and access your company paper records now? There can be no doubt that 95% plus of UK business owners are happy to work with time honoured methods of paper handling and distribution that simply do not have a place in todays modern business culture. Everything from payroll details to invoices and despatch notes will pass through a myriad of hands before ending up in an archive file or space eatiing filing cabinet. In short a veritable mountain of paper every year will find a new home within your business and take up residence in hanging and lever arch files, archive boxes, drawers, cupboards and filing cabinets all around your office. The National Office of Statistics calculates that for every desk in UK businesses there are 3 filing cabinets keeping the desk company. That's good news for manufacturers of filing cabinets but definitely not good news for the efficiency of your business.

Now consider the alternatives and subsequent real benefits if all of those documents were electronically stored.

SPACE EFFICIENCY You could free up vital and expensive floor space once occupied by all this storage creating space for productive purposes i.e. revenue producing staff!

TIME SAVING No more time consuming trips to the filing cabinet only to find the file you want has been misfiled, is on someone else's desk or simply missing.

ACCESSIBILITY. Document scanning & management will give you major benefits over old fashioned physical filing storage and speed up the entire paper handling process by as much as 45% Source: Gartner institute. This dramatically speeds up communication and subsequent decision making as all interested parties can view, discuss and implement actions simultaneously, even from different corners of the world!

CONSISTENCY With paper based control and purely human input there is always the risk of documentation not being completed correctly and therefore failing to provide the data required for later reference. Document Management can be intelligently employed to enforce consistency and quality of information at the level you require. Levels of inputting consistency are virtually guaranteed with a document management system. Adding new staff or temporary staff will have no effect on accuracy of inputted information as pre-determined information can be set and must be adhered to before allowing the operator to move on to the next input box or field. Different departments may also have different checking or approval processes and once defined a Document Management system will ensure they are followed.

PROFITABILITY & THE NEED FOR IMPROVED PRODUCTIVITY. A critical consideration for any business is the amount of time that employees take to find, retrieve and work with documents kept in a conventional filing cabinet. As an example lets take a £10 an hour employee and assume they take just 5 minutes to get up from their desk, walk to the filing area, find their chosen file, work with it, refile it and return to their desk. If that happens only 5 times a day then that equates to over 100 hours per annum - or put another way - just over £1000 per annum in wages - for just one employee. Multiply that realistically by the number of staff who access files every day in your business and the numbers are large enough to make any accountant cry! - Instant fix????

A document management system that allows staff to capture, store, find, retrieve and work with records but without ever leaving their desks can recoup set up costs in an instant AND massively improve productivity.

SECURITY However you currently store your documents, electronically or otherwise, it's a good bet that you don't have adequate security or disaster recovery in place. Document Management allows you to create copies that can be backed up in a variety of ways, including off-site. This ensures that no unforeseen fire, flood, identity thief or even disgruntled employee can threaten the integrity of your most valuable data.

Document Management Software

Some business categories such as legal, accountancy and logistics as well as busy accounts departments, seem to get swamped by paper and handling all of the information coming in on a daily basis is hard work. A document management system is the efficient way of finding information faster - all of the information is in one place, its easy to search for specific documents and its much faster to categorise as well.

We wonder why only 5% of UK businesses use a document management system whereas 95% of the top 500 global organisations do? Draw your own conclusions on that one!