How do you currently store an important document?
Perhaps you’re fine placing your documents in an archive in your office, or maybe you’re a small at-home business that stores their documents in a simple drawer in your desk. While these methods are cheap, reliable and often preferred by many smaller companies, there’s always going to be a couple of problems you’ll encounter that do need to be dealt with eventually–especially if you plan on growing your business in the future.
Why is document storage important?
Let’s say you’re a growing business that deals with many different purchase orders and invoices. These documents are essential for many various reasons, such as for financial audits in the future or even for calculating your working capital. Managing all of these documents can be a pain, and when you need to search for a specific record or document, you need to go through archives just to find a single piece manually. This can become incredibly time-consuming, and there are far more efficient ways to manage your secure document storage solution.
In fact, inefficient document storage is actually very costly to your business.
In 2005, the International Data Corporation (IDC) published a white paper called “The Hidden Costs of Information Work”. In the study, the IDC estimated that around $2.5 to USD 3.5 million is wasted every year by companies with around 1,000 employees failing to locate certain essential documents and records. This is a staggering amount of money spent just because employees couldn’t find the right documents when they needed them, and it’s something that can easily be avoided with the proper storage solution.
The problems with traditional document storage
If you’ve yet to upgrade from a traditional document storage solution, then here are some of the disadvantages you’re probably facing on a day-to-day basis:
You’re dedicating a lot of office space to storing your documents. That space could be used for more employees, a less cluttered workspace or even more hardware for a more efficient business.
You need someone dedicated to managing those documents, such as knowing where to store what, how it’s sorted, where individual records are located and so on.
You risk losing records due to ink fading, physical damage to the documents or even losing the papers due to mishandling them and being forgetful.
You spend a lot of money on printer ink and paper.
Because your document storage isn’t digital, it takes a long time for someone to find what they want and access it because they need to be in your office physically.
You’re unable to efficiently share information and records because the only copy is a physical one. You’ll need to manually scan or take a picture of the document to send it to someone over the internet.
All of these problems can be frustrating to deal with, and it’s why many companies are switching to secure document storage solutions that are both affordable and more efficient.
Upgrading to a digital document storage solution
So if traditional storage solutions are slow and expensive, what’s the alternative?
That’s when we should start looking into digital solutions. By turning all of your paper storage into digital records, they become much more accessible to categorise and locate. For example, if you were searching for a particular invoice that you sent a couple of months ago, you could use software to search through your records and find the relevant document. This is much faster and easier than looking through a box of papers, saving you time, money and a lot of effort.
However, there is a catch with upgrading to a secure document storage solution; it’s time-consuming.
Individually scanning, storing and even shredding your documents can take a lot of time. Scanning, for instance, should be done at the optimal quality to ensure that the document is preserved in excellent condition. This provides that you don’t lose data and it also means that when you come back to read these documents that you can see everything clearly.
Next, storing the documents can take time because you need to figure out the best way to do so. You could sort them by their function or by their date, and you’ll need to back up these files so that you don’t lose them. Lastly, shredding your existing documents after they have been converted will help you save a lot of office space and ultimately be more secure so that if you do throw out your records, they won’t be picked up from the trash and used in malicious ways.
All of this adds up and can cost you time and money. Luckily, there is a way to make it easier to switch to a better document storage solution.
Document storage can be handled by others.
The best way to manage your documents is to seek the advice of a document storage service directly. A trusted local service can help you scan your documents with professional equipment to preserve the quality of your documents, and they’ll supply those files either on a storage medium such as a DVD or even in the cloud for you to download and access. They’ll scan every single document you give and also help you sort and categorise those files.
Another critical aspect is privacy. Many companies will need to convert sensitive customer information into digital images that can be used for secure document storage, hence why it’s essential to rely on a trusted service that can guarantee your privacy. This is another reason why it’s necessary to hire a professional service, and it’s well worth the added cost to give you peace of mind.
You can save lots of time by hiring a document storage solution. It may seem expensive, but when you consider the amount of time it would take to scan and shred your documents. And also the time it would take to set up some kind of system to organise all of your newly digitised digital records, it makes sense that service will ultimately end up being a cost-effective solution to help you store your documents.
