Why Go for Document Scanning and Offline Data Storage?
If you are fed up of the traditional paper document management in your organisation, then it is high time that you should go for an electronic document storage solution. For that, you must hire a document scanning service provider who helps in converting your paper documents into digital images that you can store online or in offline storage. Most of the scanning service providers also offer offline data storage solutions. Therefore, if you want your scanned data to be stored offline, a single data scanning service provider could take care of all your worries.
Pros
You might be thinking, “if I’m fed up of my current paper document management system, then why should I go for a document scanning service? Is it really going to benefit me or will I get entangled in another cumbersome process?” To help make your decision easier, let us look at some of the striking advantages of electronic offline document storage solutions over paper document management.
Less Response Time
When your documents are digitally scanned, it is easier and less time consuming to retrieve relevant information from them. In the offline data storage solution provided by a document scanning service, you get a digital database where all of your documents are well organised. When you want a particular document, you simply need to search it using keywords and the required file appears in no time.
Beneficial to Legal Matters
It is in your company’s interest to keep the signed copies of contracts and other legal documents digitally scanned and stored offline. You can even keep the original copies in paper formats after scanning them so that you can retrieve a copy of the same in case they get lost.
Disaster Awareness
Scanning your paper documents and keeping them in an offsite location usually helps you in preparing yourself for any kind of disasters that might damage your data. Document scanning services usually store your offline data in different servers across separate locations. Therefore, if you lose your data from an offline location due to disasters like fire, floods, or other calamities, you could retrieve them from another offline location.
Information Security
If you think your sensitive documents should have restricted access then scanning and converting them into the digital format will help you get such a security edge. Document scanning service providers offer encryption as well as password-protected access to your sensitive and important documents. On the other hand, you cannot encrypt or password protect your paper documents. Therefore, whatever other security measures you may take, there is always the possibility of those paper documents getting into the wrong hands.
Simplicity and ease of storage
To store your paper documents, you need file cabinets, which consume a considerable amount of your office space. With time, as the number of documents amplifies, space required for them also increases. However, if you hire a document scanning service to convert your paper documents into the digital format, you will find it a very convenient way to store and will not have to think or worry about any piling of documents in your office. The digitally converted documents can be stored easily into CDs, DVDs or hard drives locally. You can also opt for an offline data storage solution and store your digital data in a server located outside your office premises as an additional precautionary measure.
Syed Afzal Hussain is an Instructional Designer by vocation and a freelance blogger by choice. He loves blogging about latest technological trends, especially document scanning services, offline document storage solutions, etc.