How Paying Someone Else To Handle Your Business Records Saves You Money

You’ve worked hard to grow and steer your business to the size and space it occupies today. Perhaps by this point you’re lucky enough to look back on years of operation, numerous employees, and even more numerous clients or customers affected by the sum total of your effort. But beware: Success is the ultimate double-edged sword that can just as easily cut you if you’re not careful to scale your organization’s processes with its growth - even its least front-facing.

Likely the least glamorous side effect of rapid or prolonged growth is the sheer volume of paper even a digitally oriented modern business generates. It’s tempting to take a “see no evil” or “out of sight, out of mind” approach to record-keeping processes, especially those that aren’t directly part of your company’s main verticals.

Ultimately, converting to a predominately digital record-keeping process across your organization wherever possible can save money through better access control, faster access, and a smaller storage footprint. Yet the extent of that savings is largely dictated by not only the initial conversion of existing data but also the degree to which new practices are integrated into existing processes. In many cases, businesses create better outcomes by partnering with a well-established Electronic Content Management provider whose expertise makes every step of the process pain-free.

Economies of Scale, Economies of Experience

Do you know the proper temperature and humidity to store paper records at in order to prevent premature degradation? What about digital media? Could stray magnetic fields or static buildup create an invisible and unforeseen catastrophe the next time you attempt to access a client’s account?

Fully digitizing years of paper records - not just scanning, but also classifying, indexing using advanced optical character recognition technology, creating redundant copies in case of catastrophic data loss - is a highly non-trivial activity that involves substantial and sustained outlay of financial and intellectual capital to properly do in-house.

Likewise, storing data locally - physically on paper or digitally - can invoke a plethora of expenditures - a physical access control system, improved climate control, specialized server appliances - and of course, the salary of someone to properly maintain such a system.

Established ECM partners are typically able to leverage economies of scale and years of experience to provide a better experience for less money.

Secure Destruction Protects Intellectual Property

Conniving competitors are an undeniable liability, as are audits under the right circumstances. Full service ECM partners offer industrial shredding capabilities, certificates of destruction to provide peace of mind for your and your clients, and even mobile on-demand on-site destruction capabilities for both paper and physical/digital media. By staying abreast of the latest requirements for document retention, you’ll be sure to minimize your exposure and that of your clients during an audit while simultaneously fulfilling your legal responsibility.