There’s never been a better time to go paperless. Digital transformation has been a thing now in the corporate world for the last twenty years. So if your company still runs on paper, you’re a little late to the party! But that doesn’t mean you can’t join in the fun. So unbutton that shirt, and read on about how the cool cats are doing it. 

Backstory snapshot: At the turn of the century, going paperless was a new age concept not widely pursued by smaller companies because it was cost-prohibitive to all but multinational corporations with multi-million dollar budgets. But then, around 2010, something made digital more reachable: the smartphone revolution.  

That’s right. Smartphones get credit for shaking up the world.  With smartphones came a grand-scale “average Joe” acceptance of digital technology. 4G LTE wireless networks put Netflix in our purses and live-stream NFL games in our pants (like, our pockets). Where digital used to live only in the geek domain, it was suddenly something anyone could tap into anywhere to bet on fantasy football. We turned a corner that had been coming since the 1980s and, finally, the digital world felt less like a “weird science” concept and more like a tangible thing that made life easier.  

That lean on digital technology went up as advancements in digital technology came down. And as the cost of digital tech came down, that put more data-related things within reach both at home and at work. Hooray! 

The cost of converting paper to digital files wasn’t a wall anymore. The wheels of change turned faster, and more and more companies wanted access to company data from afar using phones, tablets, and laptops—especially as more employees worked from home. In swoops a global virus in 2020 and that work-from-home (#WFH) luxury perk became a mandated thing. Overnight, employers still groping their photocopy machines and filing cabinets watched as the world pitched those antiquated weights out the proverbial window. And employees weren’t sad about the broken panes and metaphorical refuse littering the sidewalk like dead tokens of business past.  

Going paperless is a big deal—so don’t botch it!

There are so many good reasons to go digital these days. The main reason companies drag their feet is the cost. But that line item expense your payables department processes doesn’t show how that expense actually saves you money. Because with digitization comes a whirlwind of productivity improvements and security safeguards, along with huge savings in paper storage cost and utility bills (you can downsize your physical office footprint… and your carbon footprint). Those are the immediate gains. But spending money on digital transformation now also saves you the potential future costs associated with data loss (natural disasters like floods and fire), as well as retiring employees who tend to guard their documents like over-coddled grandchildren. Spending money on productivity means not wasting money searching for paper:

According to McKinsey, “employees spend 1.8 hours every day—9.3 hours per week, on average—searching and gathering information. Put another way, businesses hire 5 employees but only 4 shows up to work; the fifth is off searching for answers, but not contributing any value.”

Going paperless is a big deal because any employee can access the information they need at any time from anywhere, making their workflow efficient. And when we say, “efficient,” what we mean is you stop paying the skilled people you hired to search for a piece of paper on a dusty surface somewhere not near them. Efficiency knows nothing of driving to an office to flick on fluorescents to search down a handwritten note stuck to a corkboard. An efficient workflow means you pay those skilled people to make your company more money. And that happens when they can easily log into secure, gated, collaborative software to contribute their skills to a shared document in the cloud from their phones at a football game. Mind blown!

Once you decide that sounds like a great plan, the value that comes from going paperless depends on picking the right document scanning company.  

Seven key questions to ask any document scanning company worth its salt: 

Question 1: Are you a document scanning company that’s a member of IIMDA?

As in all industries, some companies are more qualified than others. That is to say, plainly, that some companies are poised and prepared to propel your company to Profit Land better than other companies that are purely postured poop. To prevent a fly-by-night “scanning company” from derailing your scanning experience with a refurbished scanner and a handful of temp students in a garage somewhere, make sure you contact a reputable local scanning company.

How do you know the back-alley boobs from the brilliantly bonified? By looking at their associations. The Independent Information Management Dealers Association (IIMDA) is the oldest and largest dealer group in North America dedicated to scanning and data management technologies. Consisting of 22 members across the United States and Canada, there’s an IIMDA document scanning company near you.

If you’re in or around Louisiana or the Gulf south from Texas to Florida (including Abita Springs, New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Denham Springs, Hammond, Covington, Mandeville, Memphis, Atlanta, Shreveport, Lake Charles, Lafayette, Gulfport, Biloxi, Mobile, and Jackson), the brilliantly bonified company you’re looking for is Revolution Data Systems. We employ over 35 full-time staff in these areas who have years of experience in the realm of paperless profit principles and who follow industry best document scanning practices—naturally, because they’re awesome. 

Question 2: How do we know our records are kept safe and confidential?

An important question! There are processes and clearances that ensure quality control and security. Confidentiality is safeguarded in secure facilities from beginning to end with disaster recovery plans and industry certifications. A reputable company will provide proof that 100% of the newly scanned electronic documents match the original paper count. Ask any document scanning company if they have the AIIM Capture and Imaging Certification. If yes, you’re in good hands. If not, you could likely tell by the spray-painted cube van with peel and stick magnet logo that they weren’t certified in anything but roofing (before they went to prison).

Question 3: Can you come to us and scan on-site?

A reputable scanning company will take care of transporting documents in a secure chain of custody from your office to the certified scanning facility. In the case where your documents can’t leave your building, ask any scanning company if they provide mobile scanning service—cool, right? At RDS, we set up scanning equipment onsite and digitize your collection at your location. You can watch us work our paperless magic from the spot where the paper mess happened.

Question 4: What goes into the prep (pre-scanning), what ensures high-quality scans (during), and what can I expect as outputs (after)?

Prepping documents takes a great deal of time so, unless the skills for which your employees were hired involves staple removal, leave prep to the pros. Document scanning technicians organize your files by repairing damaged paper (tears and wrinkles) and removing staples and paperclips before scanning—with pride!

OCR technology is crucial during the scanning process. OCR makes sure that you can search your scanned documents because the image is converted into electronic text. Your new electronic documents should be provided in digital formats like PDF and JPG. OCR is not something you can do without, so make sure it’s part of the deal!

The best way to manage electronic documents is with a document management system (DMS). Ask a scanning company if they provide each of these pre/during/post scanning services. If one of these elements is missing, check their van to see if it used to belong to a roofing company.

Question 5: Can you scan everything, even large-format documents?

The answer had better be yes, or they don’t make the short list. A reputable document scanning company handles almost any size document from letter and legal to large format blueprints and engineering drawings. A better question is whether atypical documents can be scanned at high volume and high speed.

At Revolution Data Systems, our team is well set up to handle oversized[7]  documents and is experienced with all kinds of record types from client files, HR, financial, medical, land and title, litigation, newspapers, bound books, and more. We’re always excited about the “and more” stuff so please don’t shy away from giving us a challenge! 

Question 6: Can you store our documents as we work through the scanning process?

Some organizations want to go digital, but their budget doesn’t allow 100% bulk scanning of all documents all at once—bummer! But these are often the companies that are bulging with paper and have run out of space—grody! Ask a document scanning company if they provide record storage and record retrieval. If they do, you get back your space because all documents will be moved offsite to be scanned in batches—breathe again! And if you need a document that’s being stored that hasn’t been digitized yet, a reputable scanning company should provide on-demand scanning of required documents.

At RDS, our facility is equipped with 24-hour surveillance, enhanced security alarms, smoke detection alerts systems, temperature control, Justin Timberlake, and everything you need to keep your documents happy and secure until they’re scanned. And we provide scan-on-demand, a stress-relieving service that makes sure any record you need within our custody is always available in about 30 minutes. Yes, we know how fantastic that sounds! That’s why we offer it!

Question 7: How much will it cost?

This is the most popular question, and the answer is that it depends on a lot of things. That’s why you’ll see a wild range of costs that vary from scanning company to scanning company.

At Revolution Data Systems, we don’t like wild ranges—unless it’s the beautiful Louisiana backcountry! That’s why we charge per page for scanning and per document for indexing. A document can be a single page or hundreds of pages. And a single page can be duplex (two-sided). But take heart! As the volume of paper increases, the average scanning cost goes down (like the housing market on the heels of a pandemic).

Here’s a ballpark figure: If you’re staring at a standard banker’s box, there’s approximately 2,000 and 2,500 pages in there. You shouldn’t pay more than 7 to 15 cents per sheet depending on the amount of prep work involved, the OCR/index requirements, the volume and timeframe, output format, whether the electronic documents will be loaded into a document management system, and whether the original documents will be shredded or archived. That’s between $140 to $175 per box on the low end and $300 to $375 per bankers box on the high end. If you’re quoted higher than that for lesser service, shop around. Every scanning project is different. Lucky for you, Revolution Data Systems provides free quotes so you know exactly what it will cost to get fully digitized and paperless.