The Austin Paperless Office
Getting a paperless office in Austin is usually ideal for any business—but 95% of them still have their documents and company information laying on desks or stored in filing cabinets. Although they’re easy to access, over time these papers pile up, more and more filing cabinets are added, and all of the sudden ones of your offices is utilized specifically to store your files.
In most cases, when businesses make the decision to “go digital,” they hire a professional document scanning service in order to convert paper documents to electronic versions. Digital documents are easier to access, eliminate the chance of older document versions being wrongly edited and distributed, and streamline the flow of documents through your business.
Thinking About Going Paperless? Consider These Questions First
Is hiring an Austin document scanning service a cost-effective solution for you? This usually depends on how many documents you want to convert. There’s a chance you’ll come across some issues if you decide to make the transition to the paperless office for your business—but using this checklist you can avoid some of the pitfalls associated with the paperless conversion:
- Are you going to save a significant amount of money spent on paper, postage, ink and other supplies each month?
- Will file organization be easier by going paperless and making use of an ongoing scanning service?
- Will it be easier to access documents through an electronic management system than through the system you’re using now?
- Will confidential files and documents containing personal or critical business information be more secure through document scanning and electronic storage?
- Will record scanning save you considerable storage space in your office?
- How much time to do you spend shuffling through stacks of paper? Will electronic documents eliminate some or all of that?
- How do you back up your business files now—what happens when the system crashes?
- Will your new system be easy to use, and will your employees find it easier to use digitized documents?
If you can answer all these questions with confidence, then you’re ready to go paperless! If you have questions, or want more information, just give Austin Scanning and Imaging a call at (512) 410-0322, or fill out the form to the left to request your free document scanning quotes.
Federal Laws Encouraging the Adoption of Electronic Document Storage
- In 1996, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was passed, which addresses the security and privacy of health data. The standards are meant to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the nation’s health care system by encouraging the widespread use of electronic data in the US health care system.
- In 2002, the federal government introduced the introduced the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which requires businesses to properly maintain financial records. That includes being able to retrieve them when required. This is significantly easier when the documents are stored electronically.
- In 2003, Congress passed the Fair and Accurate Credit Reporting Act (FACTA), which also requires business to properly safeguard and store personal information of employees and customers and properly destroy them. Obviously, if documents are systematically converted to a digital format, it is easier to store, retrieve, and ultimately destroy this sensitive information.
Many offices still operate under a flood of paper documents. Employees maintain a personal archive, each office maintains another archive, and then there is also an official company archive. Since the storage required for paper documents grows at a rate of 20-25% every year, many companies look to document scanning and paperless storage to store their company documents to help meet their storage needs.
Consider this—just one 80 gigabytes hard drive can hold 2.7 million documents and costs only $120. The same storage for paper documents would require 68 four-drawer file cabinets, and the cost for one cabinet by itself is more than $120. With all this to keep in mind, it is no wonder that a growing number of companies are making the decision to go paperless, and Austin Scanning and Imaging can help your business do it too!
Get Free Quotes on Document Scanning and Storage Options in Austin
To learn more about the available services offered by Austin Scanning and Imaging, just give us a call at (512) 410-0322, or fill out the form to your left to get free document scanning and paperless storage quotes today!
901 S Mo Pac Expy
Austin, TX 78746
Phone: (512) 410-0322
E-Mail: info@austinscanning.com