Digitize Paper, Do Better

Whether you’re starting a business, growing an existing business, or simply managing your existing clients, somewhere there’s a growing paper trail associated with your activity. Recordkeeping will always be an integral part of effectively running any business - a necessary evil, perhaps. But thanks to increasingly sophisticated digital alternatives to traditional filing systems, that overhead can all but disappear from an organizational standpoint.

So, would digitizing your paper records help your enterprise turn over a new leaf, forgiving the wordplay? Read on to see if the benefits align to your objectives for the new year.

Save Space

The most obvious benefit to digitizing records is, well, the sheer amount of space you’ll save. This benefit may not be immediately apparent to a fledgeling enterprise whose recordkeeping may only occupy a handful of filing cabinets in the corner of a room, but if you plan on remaining in business far into the future, you’ll need to buy bigger shoes to accommodate the growing file footprint.

By contrast, a purely digital filing solution only occupies the space required for servers and backups of your data. Thanks to Moore’s Law, that physical space required will likely never substantively expand. Even better, there are highly respected Electronic Content Management providers that store, organize, and protect your data offsite in specialized facilities to entirely eliminate the storage concern, no matter the size or growth pattern of your business. Out of sight, out of mind - until you need it.

Save Time

This point is multifaceted, and again, dependent on how tightly integrated and essential paper record-keeping is to your main verticals. If your company finds itself subject to an audit, the headache of searching through years of filings is greatly ameliorated if those filings are easily searchable. Perhaps the greatest benefit to a digital filing system is ease of access compared to more traditional physical organization. Searches by date, full text using keywords, particular employee records, particular contracts can occur in seconds rather than minutes.

Better access and ease of discovering pertinent information enables your employees to make better informed decisions on a day to day basis. Furthermore, moving information from a purely physical paradigm to the digital domain eliminates the access issues that are intrinsic to paper, namely that no more than one person can access the same information without making paper copies. In contrast, employees can’t misplace a digital file stored and accessed remotely. The possible time savings from this benefit are incalculable.

Save Money

Because digitized records largely make copying information unnecessary, there are obvious and immediate savings on the raw materials your business needs on a regular basis - copier paper, toner cartridges, etc. And as previously discussed, the time savings achieved allows all members of the organization to work more effectively as a whole, freeing resources to pursue new opportunities or solidify existing competencies.

To comply with document retention regulations, physical copies of certain documentation do need to be preserved for set periods. Many record digitization partners offer total destruction services for sensitive documents, along with certificates of destruction for peace of mind and legal indemnification. In the meantime, storage of those physical records offsite in specialty facilities is generally less expensive than in-house solutions thanks to economies of scale.

The more integral paper records are to the day to day operations of your business, the more daunting the idea of switching to a digital alternative might seem, but the benefits are correspondingly greater as well.