Today, the business world is digitizing rapidly and scanning paper documents into electronic text. Digitization helps in breaking down barriers, creates new opportunities for the business to grow, improves sales and helps earn more revenue. Converting paper documents into digital format is not an easy task. It requires skill, experience and the right advanced equipment to convert huge piles of documents into digital text. A professional document conversion service can assist in digitizing important paper documents into electronic files and help in storing, maintaining and retrieving records.
Maintaining old paper records pose various challenges. The first and foremost challenge is that the old records are highly prone to damages. With time, the quality of paper deteriorates and there are chances of natural calamities too that can damage the paper records. Huge piles of records require large storage space in your office. As the paper documents grow over time, they need to be stored safely for quick access. Other challenges are high chances of losing critical data, difficulty to transport paper documents and so on.
Paperless office is the slogan of almost all industries today. This is because digitization of paper records assure easy storage and access, better security of the documents, access from anywhere at any time, multiple accessibility, reduced storage cost and helps prevent damage of documents.
Veterans Affairs Digitize Old Paper Records
The Department of Veterans Affairs is now in the process of digitization to reduce processing time for disability claims. Among the compensation programs, the Veteran Benefits Administration provides monetary benefits to veterans with disabilities that are the results of a disease or injury. All the old paper records are now converted into digital format so that when a claim is filed all information can be accessed easily.
Around 2 million inactive files were stored in 33 regional offices across the country and more than 500,000 files have been gathered from eight regional offices for digitization. By digitizing old paper records, the VA department will save $150 million over 10 years. This is because it reduces the need to lease office space to store the paper documents.
Some of the paper records are 70 years old out of which many are handwritten and most of the documents may prove challenging to be digitized. A professional document scanning service can handle such fragile documents and convert it into digital format with utmost clarity. In addition, organizations that hire such expert services need not invest resources and time for the digitization project. This naturally will help to improve productivity and reduce in-house costs.
