Digitization: Why Outsourcing Is the Smart Solution

Digitization has been a feature of the business landscape for several decades. However, within the past few years, organizations around the world have made digitizing paper documents a top priority—allowing them to provide their mobile and hybrid workforces with the information they need when they need it.

Seemingly simple at first, digitization presents a complex process that can become even more complicated by limited resources and expenses. But what if you could simplify the process? What if you could focus on core competency while outsourcing non-core, paper-heavy processes? Furthermore, what if you could connect your teammates with the right information at the right time—anytime, anywhere?

That’s where a document scanning company comes in. Utilizing document scanning services is less expensive, less stressful, more convenient, and quicker. Let’s explore a few reasons you might want to consider an outsourced solution.

Reasons to Outsource Digitization

The inevitable digital surge has raised questions about work allocation, collaboration, security, and more. Partnering with a professional makes the process of moving to a digital business more straightforward. Outsourcing digitization provides you with the opportunity to do several things:

Gain Access

One of the most practical day-to-day advantages of digital conversion is accessibility to critical information. On average, the knowledge worker spends an estimated 2.5 hours per day, or roughly 30% of the workday, searching for information. Any effort to shrink that number means more hours spent doing actual work.

Imaging specialists scan and tag your scanned records with metadata so you can find and retrieve them quickly. Your remote workforce can more easily collaborate on projects, find information, and share data.

Eliminate Capital Investment

Digitizing documents requires special equipment, optical character recognition (OCR) technology, and trained staff that are aware of the best practices of indexing and meta-tagging.

Additionally, imaging documents is time-consuming and pulls your staff away from their core business roles. Hiring a professional scanning company to handle your digitization project is much more cost-effective and quicker.

Automate Processes

According to Atlassian, only 60% or less of work time is spent productively. Imagine a business environment where you rarely need to recreate the wheel, you’re executing the work that matters the most, and you’re simultaneously improving productivity.

Outsourcing digital conversion and adopting workflow automation solutions could make this a reality. Decrease time spent on paper-heavy actions and free yourself for more cognitive functions. Reduce processing times and human errors with quicker, more accurate results.

Revamp Your Office Real Estate

Employing a document scanning service also means you won’t take up floor space with bulky scanning equipment. High-speed equipment takes up a significant amount of space, and office floor space is valuable.

Additionally, document scanning helps you remove the paper from your office. A document management company can not only scan your documents but store them in a secure facility or shred them after the project’s completion.

Strengthen Security and Compliance

When digitizing records in-house, documents are often transferred between multiple parties. With each step of the process, a new opportunity for breach or loss arises. An outsourced solution reduces this possibility through secure chain-of-custody protocols and networks.

With documents digitized and managed through automated systems, business leaders gain insight into which employees are accessing information and how it is being used. Even better, most document management software enables authorized users to build in requirements for access, use, and retention—enabling the enforcement of compliance through one centralized platform.

Eliminate Data ROT

Redundant, obsolete, and trivial (ROT) data significantly impacts your productivity and occupies a high percentage of an organization’s data storage. A recent AIIM survey revealed that nearly 80% of electronically stored information is ROT.

ROT data not only wastes your storage space; it clogs your indexes. ROT data makes finding information difficult. When you work with an imaging specialist, consistent elements are applied to every scanned record, thus making data simple to search for, find, and retrieve.

Get the Right Scale, the Right Solution

When digitizing paper records, you might find yourself wondering where to get started. When you work with an expert, you’ll benefit from having a solid foundation from the beginning.

In many cases, it might not be in your best interest to digitize all of your documents. That’s why working with a knowledgeable vendor helps you scale the scope of your project and create a solution that aligns with your business needs and workflows.

VRC is here to help streamline your business with effective digitization, efficient document management, automated workflow processes, and more. Learn more about our suite of high-quality content services.