Is document scanning the right thing to do with my documents?

When considering whether or not to spend time and money scanning your documents, it is important to distinguish between your company's existing "back-files" and new documents that will be created or received by your company "day-forward."

Day-forward files

For the day-forward variety, scanning almost always makes sense since the amount of time it takes to scan documents is roughly the same as the time it takes to file documents away physically - and there are quite a few advantages to a paperless filing system.

Back-files

Document scanning often does not make sense for existing back-files. In addition to having already done the work to physically file these documents away, you also may have made them more difficult to scan by adding staples, separating them into folders, etc. Scanning these existing files usually only makes sense if:

• The documents are accessed frequently
• You require distributed and/or simultaneous access to the documents by different people sitting in different places
• The documents need to be retained for a long period of time
• The documents are vital to your business and you need backup copies to prepare for disaster recovery

If you are considering back-file scanning solely for the purpose of freeing up office space, then you may be better off storing the records offsite. An offsite records storage vendor can still help you transition to a paperless workplace, but in a more cost effective way: as you need to access individual documents, your vendor can scan them "on-demand" and make them available to you online or via email.