On average, companies in the US outright lose roughly 7.5% of their paper documents, and spend around 4 weeks every year trying to find those lost documents, at a cost of roughly $122 per document. All this means that even a modestly sized company producing 10,000 new documents a year will lose 750 of them, costing them, on average, $91,500. (source)
Document loss is just one reason why a paper-based office is inefficient and costly. A reliance on paper documents also slows document intake, increases errors, and has a negative impact on the environment.
So Are Electronic Documents the Answer?
So why haven’t more organizations made the transition to digital documents? The short answer is that they fear data chaos. Scanning and capturing existing documents, organizing them, and making them easy-to-search is a lot of work if you do it manually.
Add to this the mountain of data that comes from fax, email, and other types of electronic documents, and the sheer number of documents to manage can become overwhelming.
Document Capture and Indexing (associating metadata) is an essential first step to successfully manage your organizations’ most critical documents. Q-Action® Capture from QFlow Systems® can help you on your road to becoming paperless.
Why Do You Need Intelligent Capture?
- Centralized and standardized capture of all types of documents (paper, fax, email, and electronic) is critical for fulfilling security and records-management requirements.
- An overall indexing strategy makes your documents easy to find and use. QFlow Systems® can help you create a taxonomy that is enterprise-wide, with an agreed-upon standardized list of terms created to ensure consistent tagging and indexing of documents.
- Configure your unique data requirements with Q-Action® business objects. Business objects provide a single source of truth lookup database to ensure data integrity and to simplify user input. Populate business object data through API service calls, from an external system (e.g. data warehouse), or by end-users with the appropriate privileges.
- Sometimes, keeping paper is cost-effective in special cases. Q-Action® can capture and track those boxes of paper electronically with all your electronic information in one central location. Q-Action® tracks requests for, the current location of, and processes the return of the paper back to storage.
Automate Document Ingestion and Indexing
Based on your needs, QFlow Systems® can automate large portions of your centralized document ingestion process. QFlow has implemented comprehensive advanced recognition and extraction processes, reducing manual processing by over 80%.
- Paper – leverage a combination of bar codes, QR codes, and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to automatically separate, classify, and store digitized document content in a searchable format.
- Emails – automatically store and route emails sent to shared mailboxes with the appropriate metadata.
- Faxes – automatically store and route faxes based on fax number.
Enterprise Scanning and Indexing
Q-Action® supports both a centralized or decentralized environment with the ability to handle high volumes. Your remote/telework employees can scan from their location. If you have multiple office locations, offices can ship boxes to a high-volume centralized processing facility. For large backfile scanning needs, QFlow partners with conversion services companies to scan and index your paper.
Q-Action® provides full control over which organizations and classifications scanning and indexing operators are assigned to the process. This allows the scanning and indexing of a department’s documents to be performed from any location.
With Document Scanning, Your Business Can Enjoy…
Document Scanning is an efficient option for businesses for a wide variety of reasons:
- More Office Space – Convert file cabinets and boxes of paper to an efficient electronic document management system, freeing up expensive real estate space.
- Secure Document Storage – Data security is a key issue for businesses to consider. There is a greater risk of paper documents being damaged, stolen or lost through fire, flood, or theft.
- Environmentally Friendly – Get closer to eliminating the use of paper while reducing your carbon footprint.
- Improve Customer Service – Easy to find, digitized documents quickly improve customer service. Reduce customer support time and improve customer satisfaction. Both convert to repeat customers and new business.
- Save Time – Spreadsheets and corporate drives can waste precious time and cause frustration. Reducing employees’ time searching for the right documents, and thereby improve productivity.
The Ultimate Test—Return on Investment (ROI)
If you can eliminate just 20 minutes a day of searching for documents and information for 25 employees, you can save a full 8 hours of work every day. Do more, without hiring additional staff or putting more stress on your people.
Want to find out more?