Digital transformation happens in many places across the board. But the journey hinges on document scanning. Scanning your paper is the foundational first step that kicks off the transformation. It lifts you out of analog antiquation, converting your data to digital format.
“Why bother?” you ask, and how much stock should you put into all the trash talk about paper dying an immediate death since the pandemic? To answer the first question, you digitize your paper (with enterprise document scanning services) because you can do a lot more with your information when you can find it at the click of a button, share it at the click of a button, work on it as a group, pull insight from it—collaborative light bulbs, everybody!—and pack it away when you’re done with it (archive it). All that stuff happens after paper scans to digital. And all that stuff is managed using document management software.
To answer the hubbub question, paper didn’t die an immediate death since the pandemic. That’s hogwash! Paper’s been dying a slow death since the turn of the century. And if you’re just hearing about it now, swing on out into the fast lane, partner, because we’ve got you covered. You can start document scanning immediately and tick off that box on your digital transformation checklist.
And if you’re sitting there thinking “this sounds like a heck of a lot of money, muchacho,” to that we say, oh does it, now?
According to AIIM, 59% of organizations achieved a payback in less than 12 months from their paper-free projects, including 26% in 6 months or less. 84% achieved payback in less than 18 months.”
See what we did there? We anticipated objections and answered those objections swiftly while riding on a horse wearing Old Spice. So now that you know you will not only amplify your operations but do that with a payback in about a year and a half, let’s dig into the role of enterprise document scanning in digital transformation.
What is digital transformation?
Let’s use a farm analogy, shall we?
If you think of digital transformation as a farm (where a number of different activities, machinery, routines, and hired help work together to drive profits), the first step to successfully running the farm is to put a few hundred head of cattle on it. You can’t run a farm without livestock. And, for that matter, you can’t manage your cows without a barn. The barn keeps your cattle safe and sound until you’re ready to let the cows out to eat some sweet green grass. Some cows go to the back 40, some chill by the salt lick, and some stay put in the stalls. The barn doors keep your cattle in and let your cattle out. The barn is your document management software. The barn doors are the secure gated access (login) to your digital files. And the cows are your digital files.
But the cows and the barn and the barn doors are just one part of running a farm. You also need to update your ox to a tractor and swap your old milk bucket for a robotic milking machine in order to automate and optimize. You stop paying your farmhands with paper checks and set up automatic e-transfers. You stop throwing receipts in a bankers’ box and start using QuickBooks to snap photos of your receipts and automatically file them in the right categories. All those upgrades in each of those different areas make up what is known as digital transformation.
For businesses, digital transformation looks like this:
Face to face meetings become zoom meetings
Your physical mailroom turns into a digital mailroom
Trade shows are replaced by webinars and online conferences
Secure Cloud drives replace location-based filing cabinets or isolated drives churning away in a closet.
Paper files are scanned to digital files (where they’re indexed and made searchable)
Digital transformation changes your business, driving growth, boosting efficiency—making your employees and your customers happy. But the transformation to digital has a number of working parts. You need a plan to get there:
Step one: Enterprise document scanning Document scanning makes paper digital so you can shred that paper and recycle it. Low down, you can handle this in small batches with in-office scanners, tablets, and cell phones. But none of those devices are secure, the quality is crap, inconsistency abounds, indexing is nonexistent or haphazard, and the file lands in random places without assigned permissions. You think you’re saving money but what you’re really doing is asking skilled employees to perform menial tasks and nail the results up like clapboard on an abandoned shack