People scan their documents for a variety of reasons. They may want to preserve their document in a digitized manner or send a digital copy of a physical document via email. Whatever your reasons may be, you will still need to scan your documents if you wish to store them digitally.
Here are 3 ways to scan your important documents for online storage.
1. Using a scanner at home
Scanners are the primary tools used to digitize physical documents. These devices come in many varieties and cater to people with different scanning needs.
If you need to digitize a small volume of documents, you should purchase a personal flatbed scanner. These devices are relatively cheap and can fit onto most workstations and desks. Flatbed scanners are great for scanning documents that are A4 or legal document sized, but they tend to be slow.
Each page needs to be placed onto the flatbed service individually for scanning. This process is often tedious and time consuming, but it may be your best option if you need to scan a small number of pages.
These scanned pages are processed using a scanning software before being converted to images, PDF files, or other digital document formats. They can then be stored and retrieved using a workflow management software.
If you need to scan a large volume of documents, you may need to use a document scanning service.
2. Taking your documents to a document scanning service
If you work for a hospital, you may need to scan hundreds of medical records per day. Flatbed scanners are inefficient for scanning large volumes of documents, so you will need to seek out a document scanning service with access to high-volume scanners.
These scanners do not feature flat beds, but are instead equipped with document feed trays that enable users to scan large stacks of documents automatically. Users simply have to load up their documents onto the feed trays and allow the scanner to do the rest of work.
However, these scanners tend to be prohibitively expensive, so you will need to seek out a document scanning service that already owns one of these high volume scanners.
These companies offer efficient document scanning solutions for people that need to digitize a large number of documents. They can be trusted to look after your documents during the scanning process; however, if you are concerned about the safety of your documents, you should consider using an on-site document scanning service.
3. Using an on-site document scanning service
If your documents contain confidential or important information that can’t leave your office or hospital, you should consider using an on site document scanning service.
These scanning services are offered by companies that bring their scanning equipment over to your workplace and scan your documents in front of you. When you choose this option, your documents can be scanned using high-volume printers without leaving the premises. This option is especially useful to hospitals who do not want their patient records to leave their building.
Most business functions will be paperless in the future, so get started with digitizing your documents using one of the aforementioned document scanning solutions today.
