Paper filing systems are far from ideal for a wide variety of reasons, as will be detailed in this brief article. More and more frequently, businesses and various companies are looking to move away from paper filing systems, a process that can be done but also takes quite a bit of time to do. Document imaging services and digital scanning services can help to make converting documents as easy as it can possibly be, something that will improve the incentive for companies to go through the process of converting documents and converting microfiche and onto a fully digital method of storing documents. Thanks to things like document imaging services, virtual document storage is taking the world by storm not only here in the United States but in many other places all throughout the country as well.
But why are paper filing systems so detrimental, making hiring document imaging services such a valuable and worthwhile thing to do? Well, to start, paper filing systems are hugely expensive. In fact, it takes twenty dollars just to file one single document. And on top of this, many documents are lost and misplaced – more than ten percent of them, in total. When this happens, it costs one hundred and twenty dollars to find or replace a document. With so many documents getting lost nowadays, it’s very clear to see why document imaging services have become so desirable.
In addition to this, paper filing systems of document management are the opposite of time efficient. In fact, it takes up to five minutes to find a document using a paper filing system, as the employee in question must physically walk up to the file cabinet, find the document, and then walk back to where they work. When you use a digital system instead of a paper filing system, you can typically find just about any document nearly instantaneously.
And paper documents are often faxed instead of emailed. Not only does having a fax machine cost a good deal of money for the typical company or place of business here in the United States, but this is again another time consuming process that does not need to happen. In total, it takes a whopping eight minutes to send a fax. And over the course of a year, the cost of keeping up this fax machine will exceed six thousand dollars (coming in at around six thousand and two hundred dollars, to be more exact) even in the most ideal of situations and usages.
Paper usage in general also needs to be discussed when we look at why document imaging services are important and why paper filing systems should be moved away from. To put it simply, we use an absolutely incredible amount of paper here in the United States each and every year and our paper consumption grows by as much as twenty two percent every year as well. Currently, around four trillion sheets of paper will be used by the end of this one single year, and amount that is nothing if not hugely detrimental to our planet. Fortunately, switching over to better methods of storage such as digital storage can make a huge difference when it comes to saving paper and even reducing the number of trees that get cut down.
Though scanning on site can be a large process to undertake, digital image services and document imagining services can make a huge difference in the ease of the process. And no matter what, it is going to be worth it at the end of the day for the company as a whole as well as for everyone who works there. This can be seen through the many benefits of storing documents digitally.
For one, it is easier to send over important documents via email. In fact, the data shows that documents that need to be signed get signed up to eighty percent more quickly when they are able to be signed electronically. And technology has advanced to the point that even though these important documents are digital, they are still very secure from the standpoint of security, something that many people say that they are concerned with.
