How do you pick a vendor to scan and index your records?

There are many variables to consider when picking a vendor to help your office go paperless. Picking the right company can lead to a blissful marriage between your respective organizations that sets you up for many years of success. Alternatively, a poor decision can leave your office in total disarray.

This blog will uncover some of the considerations one must take when picking a company to scan and index your office’s documents. Ask these questions before hiring a document scanning vendor and you’ll be on your way to a paperless future.

Do you specialize in record services for offices like mine?

A scanning vendor that deals with mostly insurance records might not understand the nuances of your records and what fields are most important to you. Going paperless involves a lot more than running paper documents through a scanner and giving you a flash drive of scanned images. It’s paramount to understand the value that your collection holds and giving you access to the data that unlocks that value.

A county clerk or probate judge, for example, has records with infinite retention periods. Missing even a single page during scanning or mistyping an index field during data entry can spell disaster. County clerks gain a lot of value from fully indexing their land records because the public relies on their offices for research purposes. Most companies don’t know what value lies in having the grantor, grantee, section, township, and range of an instrument indexed.

Do you hire temps to scan paper?

Many scanning vendors search for large scanning projects and hire temps to perform the services. These vendors typically deliver a price quote that is too cheap to pass up and promise quality work.

I have seen countless occasions where an organization spends tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, to digitize a collection of records with lackluster document scanners and scanning software (without full text optical character recognition OCR, for example) and end up with data and images that are completely unusable. 

Do you specialize in imaging and indexing services?

Many software vendors offer imaging and indexing as a by-product of their software product(s). Hiring a software-first vendor can lead to vendor lock-in and astronomical prices. What happens when their technology becomes obsolete or a programmer leaves the company? Having a services-first vendor gives you the ability to move data into a new and better software program seamlessly. A vendor that deals exclusively with document scanning and indexing typically offers those services at a better price point.

We’d be happy to survey your collection and build a comprehensive plan to go paperless. Contact us today for a free consultation.