Documents Scanning — What are the benefits?

Photo by Maarten van den Heuvel on Unsplash

If your business still has a lot of documents in paper format, then document scanning should probably be high on your list of priorities. Transferring your documents to electronic format can require effort (and investment) on your part.

Overall, however, the results more than justify the work (and budget). To explain further, Gavin Prior, Operations Manager at Rads Document Storage shares his insight into the many benefits of document scanning.

The basic process of document scanning

For many businesses, the issue is not the document scanning itself. It’s the organising of the documents and the resulting scans. It may also be the need for quality checks.

One way to make organisation easier is to do it in stages. For example, you could scan documents in batches according to their location. You would then put the scans in folders that referenced these locations. For example, you could have a folder named “Filing cabinet 1” containing subfolders for each drawer.

Likewise, a way to make quality checking easier is to use spot checks instead of checking each document. For example, you could check the output quality at the start of a batch. Then check random documents within the batch. You can make specific checks on scans of particularly important documents, such as legal documents.

As you complete your document scanning, you can decide what you want to do with the original documents. In most cases, they should be either recycled or moved to an off-site storage facility.

The benefits of document scanning

Here is a quick guide to the top ten benefits of document scanning.

Easier to maintain effective data security

Paper documents can be either accessible or secure. Electronic documents can be accessible and secure. Firstly, you can decide who gets access to what documents. Secondly, you can decide what level of access they get. You can also monitor how they use that access.

This makes it much easier to comply with data security programs such as GDPR. Even if, somehow, none of these applies to you, you will probably have sensitive data of your own. Keeping it in electronic format will help to keep it safe.

Support for location-independent working

Location-independent working means a lot more than just remote or hybrid working. For example, it also includes hot-desking and mobile work. It also provides an obvious disaster-recovery/business-continuity strategy.

Reduced need for storage space

This used to be considered the headline benefit of document scanning. For many businesses, it’s still in the top three. If you’re paying for a physical workspace, you want to get maximum value for your money. Using prime real estate for document storage is highly unlikely to deliver that.

Helps to reduce costs

The most obvious way document scanning helps to reduce costs is by clearing space. Businesses can then either get better use of this space or downsize to a smaller one. A less obvious way document scanning helps to reduce costs is by reducing the likelihood of errors being made due to paper documents becoming unreadable.

Switching to electronic documents also helps to reduce your exposure to regulatory sanctions. In particular, by improving data security, it helps to protect you from GDPR sanctions. It may also help to protect you from sanctions for losing documents during their statutory retention period.

Keeping documents in electronic format is generally safer than keeping them in paper format. If you are required to keep a document in paper format, then it’s advisable to take an electronic copy of it as a backup. That way, if anything does happen to the original, you still have something to show any authorities that take an interest.

Easier to organise

Electronic documents can be managed with the help of document-management software. This can make them a lot more usable and hence more valuable. Even if you don’t want to go down this route, it’s very straightforward to set up a workable system of folders. If you use a clear naming convention, people can search these folders quickly and easily.

A prerequisite for automation

Delegating mundane tasks to automated tools frees up your human staff for value-add tasks. This creates better value for money for you and more job satisfaction for them.

Improved productivity

Switching to electronic documents can also help your staff to become more productive. If nothing else, they will be able to access documents straight from their desks. This may sound like a minor point. In fact, objectively it is. In the real world, however, lots of minor points quickly add up to major ones.

If you’re still using paper documents, your staff are having to get them out of some form of storage every time they want to use them. Then they have to put them back. At least they should. In reality, they might not, especially if they think they’ll want to use the documents again.

With electronic documents, the documents stay on the server. The server delivers them to your staff as needed. If multiple people need the same document at the same time, that’s absolutely fine.

Better for collaborative working

With paper documents, there are only two options for collaborative working. Either everybody shares the same document, or everybody has their own copy of the document. Both options bring their own challenges. With electronic documents, everybody can work from their own copy of a document while letting other people see their work.

Enhanced accessibility

Electronic documents can be used with text-to-speech converters. This makes them accessible to people with issues reading written words directly.

Depending on your situation, enabling someone to use a text-to-speech tool might be considered a reasonable accommodation under the Equality Act 2010. Even if it isn’t, it makes sense to prioritise accessibility. It increases your hiring options and may help to enhance your image with your customers and the public.

Last better over the longer term

For practical purposes, electronic documents last longer than paper ones. There is nuance to this. Some paper documents have been in existence literally for centuries. These documents are, however, very carefully stored and handled. Working documents that are used regularly typically last much better in electronic format than on paper.