Eight Benefits of a Document Scanner for a Paper-Intensive Business

If your business is still relying on paperwork, you are in a worse situation if you compare with your digital competitors. The increase in copies of documents can make work overwhelming for employees and the process frustrating for customers and clients. Thankfully, by scanning important documents and storing them on hard drives, flash drives, and in the cloud can make your business customer-and employee-friendly.

Nevertheless, you should look for a system that offers simplicity and flexibility as top priorities when digitizing your records. The use of a neat scanner replacement as an alternative not only helps you digitize your documents but also gives you full control over them. If you are looking for the best alternative, Filecenter is a one-stop solution. In addition to digitizing documents, the best technology also offers a host of tools and functionalities for greater efficiency and effectiveness. When it is properly done, document scanning can offer your paper-intensive business a ton of benefits. Here are eight of them:

1. Better use of office space

Scanning offers a quick way to transform how your business office functions. With every customer interaction generating paperwork, the number of filing cabinets you may need to hold files for a growing clientele can be significant. Keeping paper files on 100 repeat clients requires a significant storage space. However, if the information is scanned and kept in digital format, all the information of all 100 clients can be stored on a flash drive.

2. Cost benefits

The biggest challenge every paper-intensive business encounters is the cost of handling the extensive paperwork. Assuming your business serves 200 new customers daily, it would translate to 200 new files. At that rate, you would soon be running out of storage space, prompting you to move your office to premises with more storage space. The biggest impact of that move would be the cost aspect. Renting a bigger space would cost more.

Scanning helps a business save on costs by enabling it to re-appropriate space, reduce clutter, and downsize. Keeping files in a digital format allows businesses to transform the space that formerly housed filing cabinets into more valuable use, like the addition of workstations. A business can also downsize to a smaller office offering greater cost reduction.

3. Increased productivity

Adopting scanning can see employees’ productivity increase by up to 50-percent, especially if the employee deals with a significant number of clients every day. The biggest challenge with traditional filing is that of retrieving data, and employees spend a significant amount of time doing so, as opposed to serving customers.

Furthermore, file misplacement is also very common. Placing the file on the wrong storage cabinet or in incorrect alphabetical order can negatively hamper service. Adopting scanning allows the business to utilize searchable details for immediate document retrieval, which helps employees spend more time serving customers resulting in increased productivity.

4. Improved document privacy and security

It is easier and more economical to keep track of who accesses various documents in a digital environment. In a traditional file storage environment, it is difficult to ensure that an employee only accesses the authorized information, especially when all the information of a client is kept in the same file. Segregating information can be very expensive and time-consuming if you deal with paper: it means that every person who accesses the client file can read everything on the file. Adopting document scanning offers additional document security because of file access privileges. Document scanning offers the ability to limit or grant access to sensitive data using user roles and password protection.

5. Improved customer and client satisfaction

In today’s fast-moving world, it can be frustrating to wait for hours in an office before you are served. The time customers spend before getting what they need is part of what determines their satisfaction. It can get worse if the customer spends significant time waiting only to be told the file is missing. Scanning can help increase customer satisfaction by ensuring quick service.

Immediate data retrieval can improve the time spent by up to 50-percent, resulting in better customer experience. It also brings new ways to serve customers. With immediate document retrievals, your employees are empowered to resolve customer complaints through calls and other real-time communication methods.

6. Improved data integrity and disaster recovery

The biggest risk with official files is that they are prone to hazards and degradation. Paper files degrade over time. They can fade, wrinkle, or rip. They are also prone to human actions such as being placed in a wet deck or having something spilled on them while being worked on. Digital documents help to eliminate these problems in their entirety. As long as the files are accessible, you can be sure that you will get them in their latest state, irrespective of time. Every copy needed can easily be seen, from the original onward. You can also be sure that the files will not be misplaced or stolen. The digital records can also be backed up in multiple places to protect them from disasters.

7. Greater flexibility

In the modern working environment, employees are required to attend to different projects without compromising on work quality and quantity. If you have a deadline to meet and limited office hours, it can be more hectic and stressing in a business that uses paperwork than in a business that uses digital data. Scanning allows employees to work remotely, which is essential in ensuring timely delivery of urgent projects. It is easier and more productive to carry all the records you need in a flash drive to work on during the weekend than it is to spend prolonged hours in the office.

8. Environmentally friendly

The best way businesses can ease climate change is by ensuring less paperwork. Less paperwork ensures less paper production. It also means that less paper waste will end up in landfills. Less paper production also means fewer trees are cut, which mitigates deforestation. 

Conclusion

Every paper-intensive business should adopt scanning to ensure it remains competitive and friendly to the environment. Digitizing official files allows firms to become more efficient and cost-effective, resulting in increased productivity, reduced costs, improved customer satisfaction, and increased profitability.