Should you scan your own business documents?

How many records and documents does your business have lying around in cabinets or stacked boxes in your hallways right now? I bet you’re dreaming of the day when they can all be digitized and searchable on an online database.

Document Scanning Services

You may even be thinking of hiring a temporary employee and a desktop document scanner to get them all scanned onto your computer. This seems great at first, but there is a more effective and accurate way to get this job done: hire a professional document scanner.

Here are 4 reasons you may NOT want to scan your own documents:

Accuracy

The act of putting a piece of paper through a scanner may seem like a no-brainer to do yourself, but that’s not the end of the task. After you manually scan a document, you need to ensure it’s given a proper file name (with logical file name and date conventions), then save it in the correct folder or to the correct location in your file management system. This process can be time-consuming and the risk of human error is higher.

With a professional document scanner who uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR), much of this is automated so it removes the “human error” component. Professional OCR software can automatically pull key data from the document to use in the file name or searchable keywords and tags. Professional scanning companies will quality check each page to ensure legibility, which still takes less time than if you did it yourself.

Manpower

To scan your documents in-house you need to assign a staff member to the task. Sure, if you only have a couple of documents this makes more sense. But if you’ve got a backlog or a consistent heavy stream of documents to scan, this could take an untrained staff member or even an office temp a long time to complete and their time is taken away from their regular office tasks.

Make things easy on yourself and hire a professional document scanning company so you and your staff can focus on your real jobs.

Scan Quality

Standard paper scanners do an ok job of scanning docs. But when quality and clarity are critical, professional scanning equipment will give you a digital copy that’s identical if not better quality, than the original paper copy.

When scan quality is paramount, hire a professional document scanner to ensure the scans are complete (nothing is cut off) and high quality.

Searchable documents

When you use a standard home or small office scanner for your documents, they’re not immediately searchable or indexed. You’d need to manually add any search tags to the document.

When a professional scanning company uses its commercial-grade OCR technology, key data fields are pulled directly from the scans so information like client numbers, names, and critical data can be automatically extracted and uploaded as tags to your document management system.

Basically what we’re saying is that, yes you could scan your own documents if you have a small handful. Bigger jobs are best left to the professionals who can ensure you get the quality and quick turnaround you need.

Paper Document Scanning Services in Vancouver BC

To see how Micro Com Systems can help with your professional document scanning needs, contact them today for a quote on your project, or order your sample scan today.