Archiving and organizing paper documents consumes a great amount of time. Employees who manually file the documents are also susceptible to commit errors in filing. A single document misplaced in the wrong folder or section is almost as bad as losing that document, especially when there are no duplicates or back-up electronic files. Paper documents can also be lost, destroyed or fail to be returned by employees who used them. The manual filing process involves manpower; and it is common knowledge that manpower costs are usually the most expensive expenditure a company has. This not only involves the salary but the training costs that the company invests on every employee. If the company can turn to a reliable and virtually infallible online document management software to handle their important data, the company will be able to save a huge amount of money.

It is quite common for organizational departments and sister companies that are located in different parts of the country or the world to share documents. The usual way for companies to solve problems in sharing paper documents is to make duplicate copies of these documents and store them in multiple locations that are quickly accessible to the companies. However this involves a huge waste of manpower and resources since the company will have to maintain employees that are responsible for storing and retrieving the documents. Version control is also impossible when people in different locations annotate and edit the paper documents. For the head office to determine the official copy of the document, it will need to hold meetings for the representatives of the geographically distributed organizational departments.

The problems that arise from the disparity among multiple copies of the supposedly same documents are numerous and disadvantageous to the company. For example, documents about the features and characteristic of a certain product need to be uniform and standard. In the unprecedented event that franchise or sister companies happen to differently annotate and edit copies of the documents and shared them with clients, should the clients discover the disparity among the documents, they could begin to question the credibility of the organization that governs these companies. The production of multiple copies of documents and document sharing reinforce the need to centralize the storage of original documents. These documents should be made available through secure, electronic document management systems.

Costs Involved in Manual Document Management Manpower Costs:

Manpower takes up a significant amount in the overhead costs of any organization in different parts of the world. From the costs during the hiring process, the pre-employment trainings, the regular salary and the bonuses, the organization spends a great deal in maintaining employees across all levels. Employees in charge of document management are in charge of printing, distributing and filing paper documents. These employees, however experienced they may be, are still susceptible to commit filing errors. There are additional time and money involved in having to redo the procedures involved in preparing the paper documents. The company will also have to shoulder such expenses that could otherwise have been spent on tasks that increase productivity.

Most companies utilize an intricate system of archiving paper documents in their storage area. However systematic the employees are, there is still a possibility of misplacing the documents. An employee in charge of document retrieval will most likely take a considerable amount of time in searching for a misplaced document. Should the document be needed immediately, the employee may have to report that the document is missing and will need to reprint the document. Although this entail an added cost, it would be only possible if such document actually has a back-up electronic copy. There are instances when some old files’ electronic copies have been corrupted. This would mean that the only surviving copies are the paper documents. It would cause the company a great deal of trouble if such paper documents are lost or destroyed during a fire or other natural disturbances.

Materials Costs:

The cost of printing and maintaining paper documents take up a significant amount in the company’s yearly overhead costs. Paper and printer toner entail the largest office supplies expenses in any company. A survey was done on 1000 different employees of a certain well-known office supply magnate. They were asked which two office supplies sell the most and the most common answers they gave were paper and toner. These costs are readily identified and quantified from accounts payable invoices. An estimated paper and toner reduction can be easily converted to big savings that can be used for more productive tasks. Turning most documents to electronic documents can greatly reduce material expenditure of the company.

Other miscellaneous costs involved in managing paper documents include storage supplies such as filing cabinets, folders, labels and plastic covers. Also included under miscellaneous costs are those that are involved in shredding, archiving and mailing of paper documents.

Equipments Costs:

Documents need to be printed, reproduced, sent by facsimile or even destroyed for confidentiality reasons. To be able to perform such processes, companies need to invest on different kinds of equipment. A company needs to have computers, printers, copiers, scanners, fax machines and shredders. These equipment need to be maintained and regularly checked. There are times when they need to be changed to ensure that processes are being performed smoothly. The electricity needed to use the equipment also needs to be taken into consideration. Electricity costs quite substantial especially during electricity price hikes.

A paperless office will simply need reliable desktops or laptops and a high-speed Internet connection. With electronic documents, filing and archiving is so much easier when utilizing an online document management software. Printing documents will only be occasionally necessary since there is efficient document sharing through document management platform. A company can work with a single account to be shared among its employees. An account administrator will handle the files and is in charge of granting access to the employees. Each employee will have different access privileges depending on their projects.

Storage Costs:

As companies expand, they acquire and produce significant amounts of paper documents over time. These documents, particularly important ones, need to be located in close proximity to workers. Such documents require extensive amounts of office storage space. In the cities, office rental is ridiculously expensive thus storage space for documents is often limited. The reason why some companies would opt to store documents in an off-site location is to make the most out of the rented office space within the city.

Storage spaces require to be protected and maintained to prevent damage to the documents. Pests such as rats or termites can feed on and destroy these documents. Natural disasters such as fire, floods and hurricanes can sufficiently damage an entire storage warehouse and all documents contained inside will be forever lost. Paper documents tend to have molds when stored in a humid environment. The storage spaces will need to be dry and cool to maintain the documents’ shelf-life as long as possible.

What makes up an online document management solution?

Online document management involves a process wherein documents are scanned, indexed, and stored as a digital copy of its original form. Once a document is in its digital form, it can be easily routed or distributed among the employees who need the document through their laptops or office desktops. For this to be made possible, users will need to have a high-speed Internet connection. State-of-the-art document management platforms utilize web-based architectures, hence only an Internet browser is needed to use the software.

Users will be given an access code by the account administrator of the company’s online document management software account. The good thing about online document management softwares is that they are being offered as ‘software as a service’ wherein the companies no longer need to install a software to their computer systems. All they need to do is to subscribe to the online solution to have their own account. This account will be managed by an appointed account administrator.

The account administrator is responsible of granting access privileges to the users. It is up to the administrator to determine the extent of the access privilege given to a particular employee. There is always the need to protect the confidentiality of documents even from the eyes of the company’s own employees. Software companies are aware of this fact which is why they designed the intricate access privilege feature in maintaining document confidentiality. An administrator can assign the folders to a group of users to which only they can have access to. Users assigned codes only allow them to have access to the folders they are directly involved in. In instances where they are removed from a project and transferred to another project, the administrator can change that particular user code’s accessibility. Should employees resign or be terminated, the administrator can also remove their accessibility to render their codes invalid.

Online document management softwares have an automatic and organized system of archiving stored and uploaded documents for convenient retrieval. Filing errors are virtually eliminated with the online solutions’ foolproof archiving system. To retrieve documents, users no longer need to go through the folders even if they know the documents’ location. All they need to do is to type the title of the document in the document management software’s built-in search engine. In cases where the users forgot the title of the documents, all they need to do is type the keywords that the document contains and the software will present a list of possible matches relevant to the keywords given.

Document workflow management is another feature that is being offered by document management softwares. Aside from storing and retrieving documents, the online document management software automatically routes throughout the organization to deliver the newly uploaded documents to the electronic inboxes of the involved individuals. This is similar to a mail delivery system, only a hundred times faster and more efficient. This routing process follows the path that a document usually takes until it has passed through the different individuals concerned and reaches the working cycle’s completion. The document undergoes annotations and changes during the work cycle, as the cycle is completed the document is either archived or discarded.

Electronic documents stored in online vaults are safe and immune from any form of environmental hazard, loss, destruction, and theft. Online storage provide a safe and secure environment with its military technology of transporting electronic documents over the Internet. Each file uploaded is encrypted twice before travelling through the Internet to the online vaults which make them invisible to the eyes of Internet hackers. As the paperless office becomes more convenient and beneficial to companies, online document management may very well replace the traditional and manual document management system.

Global concerns on environmental changes due to depletion of forests led most companies to use less and less paper documents. The green movement is no longer simply an effort put forth by concerned environmental organizations. Companies have begun sharing the mission and vision of environmental groups in reducing paper consumption and saving trees. The fact that technology has created a way to let people carry on with their work efficiently without having to rely on paper is truly astounding. It is now up to companies who still rely on paper documents to be open-minded to the benefits that could be gained by turning their paper documents into electronic documents.

The paperless office doesn’t mean that there will be no paper at all. It does mean that the amount of paper that one would find in an office will be significantly reduced. More importantly it means a societal change which will lead to the practical change. People need to start thinking of ways that they can reduce the use of paper, which has run rampant in our society.

Change the workplace:
We need to make significant changes to the workplace if we expect to go paperless. One suggestion is to remove all paper in the workplace that could possibly be replaced by electronically stored documents. A perfect example would be the rooms that are filled with glossy sales brochures that describe products, services, customer references, press releases, etc. etc. Literature Rooms have been a part of corporate life for as long as I can remember. They are usually located in the hallway exiting the building so sales people can grab what they need on the way out. These rooms filled with exquisitely labeled shelves are a way of life for most sales oriented companies. They are also a tremendous waste of paper and trees; wasting both financial and natural resources. People are becoming more accustomed to accessing electronic documents at vendor web sites rather than having to keep hard copy brochures. Vendors need to follow this lead by eliminating the Literature Room, or at least drastically reducing it.

On Demand Printing:
We also need to begin utilizing technology to eliminate the needless waste of paper. A good example is to utilize an online Document Management solution, such as file hosting, to reduce paper waste and eliminate the need to store paper documents. Documents can be scanned and maintained in a central location for everyone to share. No longer do we need to have stacks of forms in each office, which all need to be discarded when a new version comes out. Who hasn’t walked by a trash can and seen countless sales brochures or business forms that have been needlessly discarded? Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions for Document Management enable documents to be printed when needed or as is commonly referred to: On Demand. On Demand printing provides any user with the latest version of any document, regardless of when or where it was modified. Tremendous savings in both paper costs and trees would be possible if discarded, outdated documents were never printed in the first place. Check out our On Demand Printing services in Dallas, Texas.

With a financial crisis looming it’s important to reduce business costs and save money. The number game controls the world of business. Companies need to concentrate on cutting costs to remain competitive. Eliminating minor expenses that accumulate over time that deducts from your profits is important. The economy will always fluctuate but your business should stay solid. Incorporating good spending habits and making changes that will improve productivity is essential. The best method to increase profits is by saving money through reducing overhead costs. The process of managing documents for most organizations is not only time consuming but costly. Although, paying for a storage facility to house older files you no longer have use for and making print copies of documents when needed seem like an inexpensive route to take it’s not. Those quarter prints here and there actually add up to thousands of dollars wasted per year. The majority of prints made are copied in error due to a lost or unavailable form that has been requested. Why waste your money? Save on filing, storage, and printing costs by implementing an online document management service. It will not only reduce your business costs but save you massive amounts of money in the long-term.

Online file hosting or document management services copies your paper documents and transfers them into digital files. These documents which are now in electronic format such as PDF or TIFF is uploaded and stored remotely on their online hosting servers. They can be accessed, shared, searched, emailed, printed, or retrieved at any time. Companies select which files they want to be copied and scanned into the system. Documents can consist of business brochures, orientation manuals, confidential medical records, financial statements, personnel files, weekly invoices, or tax forms. Documents do not have to be in paper form to transfer into the online document management system. Digital files can also be uploaded into the hosting site and archived. To save money it’s essential to completely integrate your information into the system. Having a file management system reduces printing and storage costs. It also organizes your business for success which leads to phenomenal productivity. Employees spend less time sifting through papers and more time achieving daily business objectives. Online document management services eases retrieval of data and makes the distribution of valuable information between your staff members easier. This process can help to reduce unnecessary hours as well. Enabling access to files in electronic form makes the data useful without downloading or printing restrictions.

Using this type of system keeps you in compliance with the HIPPA also known as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. This regulation requires organizations with personal client records or information to properly manage and store them. You can always be up to code with online document management services. Becoming free from the clutter of endless paperwork without risking the loss of vital information is priceless. Also having the security of knowing that your data is secure from any type of damage is important. Document management services is the type of investment that pays for itself. Creating a collaborative work environment with increased productivity is a step that will save money and reduce business costs for years to come.

Document Scanning

One of the most challenging and beneficial tasks one can do when evaluating a product or service is a Return on Investment (ROI) analysis. It is also one of the most difficult since lots of assumptions need to be made and empirical evidence to support the analysis is hard to come by. However, that is simply not the case when performing an ROI analysis on Document Scanning solutions.

So what makes Document Scanning solutions different in regards to ROI analysis? Well for one thing, everyone can understand the concept of a Document Scanning solution. We have all waited while somebody rifled through a filing cabinet looking for a contract, patient file, or some other document to no avail. I have personally spent countless hours looking for enterprise software license contracts which are more often lost than located. One can only imagine how uncomfortable it is explaining to a customer that you don’t have any record of the special terms and conditions they negotiated 3 years ago for a 5 year contract.

A lot of us have also had the pleasant experience of locating these same types of documents using an electronic Document Scanning solution. The documents are typically indexed by multiple criteria which make them very easy to locate. More and more Document Scanning solutions are also utilizing web based architectures which makes it easy for any individual or organization to access documents. All they need is a web browser, a user ID and a password. Since they are in an electronic (or digitized) format, they can be either printed or sent as attachments to emails.

The next reason it is easy to do an ROI for Document Scanning solutions is that the criteria being measured can be easily quantified. Following are examples of these types of criteria:
• Physical storage cabinets and the floor space required to house them are easily identified. One can also determine the cost of this space as part of office space or other building overhead, and we must also include the additional space that is required to store copies of these documents in a remote location. These remote locations also need to be remote enough so that they won’t be impacted by the same natural disaster that affected the primary site. Also, of course there are costs associated with getting these documents to the remote locations and then filing them.
• The cost of storing digitized versions of documents can also be easily quantified and compared to the hard copy approach. We have all benefited from the drastically reduced cost of electronic storage. Disk space is one of the best values in the world today and many Document Scanning solutions store documents indefinitely. It is also much easier to access electronically stored documents in remote locations should the primary storage location be affected by a natural or operational disaster.
• People costs are also easy to compare between physically storing and accessing hard copies and electronic Document Scanning solutions. The comparison of scanning documents and physically filing them can be similar at low volumes but the cost of scanning can be reduced significantly when volumes are high. The cost associated with locating and accessing documents using a Document Scanning solution is significantly easier, faster and more cost effective. Most Document Scanning solutions include sophisticated indexing solutions which make it easy to locate and access scanned documents anywhere in the world.
• Productivity gains should also be included in any ROI analysis of Document Scanning solutions. As with any other solution, the biggest savings are always related to people costs. Increased productivity associated with Document Scanning solutions can lower the number of people needed to perform the document storing and accessing process. Users can also access documents themselves rather than relying on members of the administrative staff. More importantly, highly paid employees cannot do their jobs when they are trying to locate documents. I recently had an experience with a major software company that couldn’t locate an important contract that I needed. I estimated that I had to make at least 15 phone calls, received 10 phone calls and either sent or received 10 emails to finally get the contract. Cost savings associated with “people costs” can be easily calculated by estimating hours saved per year and then multiplying that by cost per hour per employee based on their hourly compensation.
• Customer satisfaction is not always as easily quantified but we all know how important it is. It is also easy to understand how irate customers can become when important documents can’t be retrieved. One would be surprised how often Account Managers for high tech companies are forced to ask their customers to locate contracts for them since they can’t locate their own. Ouch!
• Security is also an important factor when evaluating Document Scanning solutions. Hard copies of documents can be inappropriately accessed much easier than their electronic counterparts. That of course is predicated on the document accessing services having adequate security built in. Standards are in place for document storage security and it is easy to determine if a Document Scanning solution meets these standards. Another very important consideration is that electronic documents cannot be accessed without creating an audit trail. Audit trails are difficult to create for processes associated with physically accessing stored documents and since they are labor intensive, they are also very costly.

Document scanning solutions are becoming implemented widely across corporate America and the world. One reason for this widespread acceptance is the fact that ROI analysis can be easily conducted which justify the cost of implementation. I would strongly suggest that anyone evaluating the implementation of a Document Scanning solution to require each vendor to provide an ROI analysis for their solution.

Welcome to the iDOC Corp. Blog
We constantly try to offer the most up to date information for our customers and potential customers and created this blog to help answer those questions that you may have when looking at different document management solutions for your organization. We hope you find these posts, articles, news feeds and case studies helpful as you gather information to find the right solution for you and your company. Please don’t hesitate to contact us by phone or through our contact us form.