Top 5 Things We LOVE About Document Scanning

Being unorganized is a little bit like a snowball.  You only need a little snow at first, but as you know, it quickly escalates into an unruly ball of cold sadness that will knock the wind out of you!  Melt away all your stress by ditching the paper and going digital.  We did, and here is what we love about it:

1. Time Savings: We’ve all been told that “time is money”.  Well, you can keep your money.  I’m more interested in my sanity.  I’m not sure I’m willing to admit how many hours I’ve spent searching for something that has been misfiled, only to find it, set it down on my desk and lose it again.  It makes for a very, very long day.  Putting all my files into our centralized network forced me to work smarter.  Document scanning ensures that papers get scanned and placed into the right spot the first time.  In the event this doesn’t happen, we are able to do a quick computer search and find what we need.

2. Security:  Do you honestly think your employees aren’t nosey?  People always want to know information that isn’t readily available to them.  If my pay was anyone’s business, I would post it up on the company refrigerator.  Your filing cabinet is useless in fending off a curious employee.  Scan resumes, pay information, employee grievances, and reviews and only give viewing permissions to those who need to be in “the know”.

3. Keep Up With Legal Obligations:  Any CEO, manager or business owner reading this knows how important it is to follow the laws of records retention!  Whether you run a huge hospital or a small corner store, you know there are records you need to keep for a certain amount of time.  Everyone’s first instinct is to throw them in a box and put them somewhere.  If that somewhere is in a basement, I can tell you that I know first hand the horrors of basement flooding.  Your soggy, disintegrated receipts are useless to the IRS should they come knocking.  Get yourself a scanner and scan anything important!

4. Smarter Spending, Revenue Increase:  It might seem crazy that this is the last thing on my list, but all the points leading up to this one have actually saved AND made money!  The choice to go paperless is an investment, yes.  However, you will never again have file room employees.  You will not have to pay someone to go digging through a box, praying that the warranty information for your photocopier is in there.  By getting rid of processes revolving around paper, you will save money and have the chance to invest it in other areas of your business.

There you have it!  The list of the top 4 things we love about our choice to go relatively paperless!  Change doesn’t happen overnight, so think small.  Forward emails instead of printing them out and showing someone.  You’re still going to get mail, signatures (for the most part) are done with real ink, checks have to be printed, and you still have to mail things out.  Think of, or share the ways your company has improved efficiency by going paperless!!