Should I advocate records scanning for all documents?
Posted by Scott Hambrick on Tue, Dec 15, 2009 @ 02:28 AM
The short answer is scan the active stuff and store inactive records.
Scanning allows for easy sharing and manipulation of documents. Collating, stapling, filing, pulling records and interoffice mail are completely eliminated when records are scanned. Additionally, documents are easily shared after they are scanned, so, organizations with several locations can improve efficiency considerably with scanning and EDM.
Records that are very active and require a great deal of handling offer the quickest return on investment for scanning.
Studies we have done with our customers show that to pay a bill in the typical accounts payable process costs $8 - $12. Filing, collating, various invoice and purchase order approvals, copying and other tasks drive this cost up. Scanning can reduce this cost to less than $2. We find that companies often cannot claim prepayment discounts with vendors because their accounts payable processes is simply too slow to make the 1% net 10 or 15 deadline. One food wholesaler we helped institute scanning saved over $2,000/month in prepayment discounts alone.
Records that are scanned require no filing. (Duh) One wholesaler and leaser of industrial equipment we help, (if you’d like to talk to them about us, call me and I’ll put you in touch with them) creates about 4,000 work orders or sales tickets per day, each of which is proof of a sale and a lease agreement. It used to take an army of clerks to file each of these orders. Now the records are scanned or imaged. They are also indexed (tagged with keyword search terms) with transaction number, date, customer name, etc. so they can be located easily. This process is saving the customer over $7000 per month.
To sum up, if there is a great deal of sharing records, if it takes more than 1 or 2 people to complete a record (payment approvals is a good example), if there is a lot of filing, or pulling records, consider imaging/scanning your records.