Records Imaging In South Texas
Are you looking to make your company paperless? Looking for a way to make your documents easier to find and to share within your company? If you need Records Imaging in South Texas turn to Lone Star Document Management Solutions.
Types of Records Imaging
Records imaging allows organizations to capture paper-based information and convert it to electronic images that are stored in a computer electronically. Lone Star offers both of the two categories of records imaging.
- Document Imaging is scanning the documents to create a picture of the document, such as a PDF.
- Digitizing is a more advanced scan that includes Optical Character Recognition (OCR) which allows the data to be edited and manipulated.
Record imaging can also be categorized by what records are being scanned.
- Historical or past records refers to a large number of accumulated files. This is usually the files that are still being used that were created before the company started converting to digital files instead of paper files.
- Day Forward Scanning refers to scanning current communications and any mail or paper created that day that needs to be scanned.
- Partial Scanning is when a company decides to only scan certain types of documents or to only scan historical records back to a certain time (for example 2 years).
- Scan-on-demand is when a company does day forward scanning, or partial scanning, and then scans historical documents as they are retrieved and utilized.
Steps of Records Imaging
There are five basic components of Records Imaging.
- Input involves sorting the document, preparing them to be scanned, and scanning them.
- Indexing means to add metadata (data about the document) so that the document can be retrieved and searched. Metadata categories can be specific to the organization, but often include the customer’s name, invoice or account number, date, and file type.
- Storage refers to where the digital document is put once it is scanned, such as in a document management software program.
- Destruction of paper documents involves shredding and recycling the original paper documents unless they are required for legal, governmental, or industrial regulations.
- Retrieval of the scanned document allows the document to be viewed and, if digitized, edited.
Benefits of Records Imaging
Cost
Paper files are more expensive than digital files. It is estimated that a company can spend as much as 3% of its revenue on paper, printers, toner, shredders, photocopiers, staples, folders, file cabinets and other supplies needed to maintain paper documents.
Accessibility
Digital documents provide better accessibility for your entire organization. Employees spend almost 150 man-hours a year searching for paper files. Digital documents are available from their computer and can be accessed within seconds and do not need to be refiled afterwards.
This quicker retrieval also increases workflow and employee collaboration as multiple people can work on the same file, even if they are in different offices.
Having faster access to information improves customer service as the answers can be retrieved within minutes rather than hours.
Security
Records imaging can also limit who has access to the files. Whereas paper files can be seen by anyone in the office, digital documents can be password protected and access levels customized for compliance with privacy protection laws. Restrictions can be set to view only to limit who can edit and so that no copies, digital or physical, can be created.
Disaster Recovery
Paper documents can be destroyed by natural disasters such as hurricane, tornado, flood, or fire. Digital documents that are stored in a cloud and backed up regularly are safe from these disasters.
Retention Planning
It is important to keep all documents as long as they are needed for compliance issues, and to destroy them when they are no longer needed. Paper documents are often left in file cabinets and storage rooms long after they are needed. Digital documents are easier to monitor for retention schedule. Lone Star also offers Retention Consulting for all of your documents to assure that you are within compliance for all agencies governing your industry.
If you need records imaging for your company, contact any of Lone Star’s three South Texas location: Mercedes, Corpus Christi, or Rio Grande City.
