Document Scanners

We’ve got two types of files nowadays – digital and physical. Yes, you can rightly argue there are other formats that might not fall into the digital or physical categories. But for the sake of remaining cordial and the fact we’re all sitting in our homes trying to figure out when we’ll be able to leave again and resume our normal lives, let’s not argue. Ok, so pre-computing we had tons of physical documents lying around. If you were orderly (or still are), said documents were stored in folders or filing cabinets perhaps. If you’re not so orderly, said documents are under your bed or shoved into a drawer. Regardless of your level of cleanliness, we all got documents.

Now with computers and digital files, we still have documents but they’ve been shifted online. You might have some in the cloud, or your hard drive or in an external drive. For many of us organizing these types of documents is vastly easier than organizing physical files. But we still have the physical files and that can be a pain. We bet you know what’s coming … document scanning! Oh yes, scanning documents so you can toss them into the fire and have said document in a digital format. More and more businesses and individuals these days are scanning documents not simply for the ease in having everything in one place, but also for a handful of other reasons.

First is cost. Both managing and storing physical documents is more costly than digital ones. Think of it this way – a four drawer filing cabinet will take up eight cubic feet of an office and multiply this by dozens of these (for businesses especially), you’ve got some heavy costs from a leasing perspective. Bottom line, scanning your document undoubtedly lowers your monthly costs. Second is information-sharing. Sharing physical documents is tough. Having to photocopy something, or worse yet, making multiple prints are all cumbersome activities and we’re not going out on a limb when we say that sharing digital files is radically easier. And lastly, document scanning is good for the environment. Of course it is, less paper means less trees need to be used. And that isn’t even considering the use of toxic printer ink. Yuck! You reduce your carbon footprint exponentially when scanning documents.

There are a handful of things to consider before settling in on a document scanning company. First is integrity. A good company will have credible references. Said references should be all over their website and easy to locate. Second is experience and expertise. Not all document scanning companies can handle major projects like that of an accounting firm for example that would need thousands of documents of various sizes scanned. Make sure the company can handle your job and will not be easily overwhelmed. Third is security because whatever firm you settle on will be handling private documents. Said firm needs to have things like criminal background checks in place for their employees, 24-hour surveillance cameras at their offices and a staff trained in formally following HIPAA rules plus similar regulations and procedures.

It should be obvious at this point how important document scanning services are and their benefit to you the consumer. Now comes the fun part – getting together your documents to scan!