Why now is a great time to outsource document scanning
The news is finally looking optimistic; there are hopefully better days on the horizon after a tough year for everyone, BBC news estimates every adult in the UK will have their second Covid-19 jab by 31st July. Better times are coming and we will be able to see our friends and loved ones very soon (fingers crossed!).
The workplace environment has been irreversibly changed by this pandemic forever. Remote work will likely continue to be the logical way to work for tens of thousands of employees across the country even without the looming spectre of a dangerous virus. This is because they will be avoiding lengthy commutes, improving their productivity (as showcased by a plethora of studies), and having a greater job satisfaction from having an improved work/life balance. Working from home, or otherwise, typically requires remote document access for most if not all employees. How does your business equip itself to enable efficient remote working?
Outsourced document scanning
If your company hopes to improve its employees’ ability to work from home, having a digital document management system could be described as essential. Digitising (aka “going paperless”) can tailor scanned documents to whichever cataloguing needs you may have, and make the documents available in digital formats in a variety of useful ways, with a very high level of security, and be instantly accessible to those given access.
Outsourcing your document scanning will free up work-hours, which could be in short supply during these times, since it is all taken care of by us. You can also increase floor space in your office by eliminating the need for physical document storage, which is oftentimes quite excessive, and allow your business to focus on other priorities.
Scanning can also offer a wide range of flexible document storage solutions, such as the capacity to transform your business’s mail into a digital mailroom, where post is redirected to our scanning bureau, promptly scanned, and then sent to the named recipient or department in a streamlined manner. This allows for improved team coordination via shared access to a document normally only visible to a few people at a time. This makes working from whilst requiring mail from the office a breeze. Not in a rush? We offer a scan on demand service where documents are collected instantly freeing up space, and within 24 hours of a request, scanning begins on any piece of data required. If necessary, for a small fee this process can usually be hastened to be completed within 1-4 hours during working hours.
File Sharing
In order for your employees to access documents, it is important to pick which file sharing techniques that will work best for your business’s needs. After a scanning company has scanned your business’s documents, there are several options to provide the optimal solutions for you, such as a shared folder, a remote access desktop, or, now becoming more popular are “Cloud” sharing solutions.
Picture this scenario: You are the boss of a logistics company and you are not in the office, you get a call asking about the financial forecast report from 2 months ago, but you do not have access to your workplace desktop/laptop. You do however have your phone and after choosing a document scanning solution you chose to use a cloud storage system for access to your files. You input your security credentials and have access to everything that you would at your desktop, and can swiftly find the correct document thanks to all the documents being scanned having OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and therefore being indexed and searchable. This means you have just been able to fulfil a task previously requiring access to the office, just on your phone.
Remote access is another type of file sharing/digital document management service, which allows secure access to your business’s files and information from an external network as if it was at your business’s office.
What is the cloud? To put it simply, cloud storage is the synchronised saving of data in several accessible external servers. It is incredibly popular with things like mobile phone photo storage, eliminating the need for vast memory storage on phones; instead your photos can be accessed using an internet connection to a cloud, and since it is externally stored they can be accessed using many different devices.
Data Security
Most of us have probably encountered data loss or data corruption in one form or another during our lives, sometimes it’s harmless, but to a business it can be a critical issue. Physical documents are usually not copied in a separate location, whereas digital files, especially if stored on the cloud, are much easier to duplicate. Mixing different digital storage methods together makes documents more resilient. Upon scanning a document, they are then “backed up”, meaning an office could burn down, flood, be crashed into by a cargo ship and no documentation would be lost if ever given the chance to choose a document scanning solution. To elaborate, most disaster recovery techniques involve not storing your documents in just one location. Storing copies of all of your archives our cloud system will ensure that even if something happens with your computer network, you will still have your files ready and available from any device connected to the cloud network. Of course, this is all just one of many side benefits made available by choosing to use the cloud for a storage solution.
Is Your Business future-proof?
If your business is looking for outsourced document scanning, look no further. From scanning documents and subsequently ensuring they are accessible via a secure document management system that is easy to use and secure, to actually storing physical files in our secure in-house facility, we are the experts you need right now.
We have our very own Cloud-based file sharing service called Pearl Cloud. Pearl Scan has the capability to handle all documents and paperwork in a professional, secure and streamlined manner.
We also have developed our own remote access software called Halogen, which has been widely accredited. We will work with you to sort out the collection of your documents, then handle all the rest to suit your business’s needs and provide all the services detailed in this blog and more. Find out more about what we do by using the link below.