FAQs
Who should outsource scanning with River City Data?
What do Scanners Cost?
What is the cost of servers and storage?
A Microsoft Windows Server with the SQL database and multiple hard drives for storage present a significant investment. Most servers operate well for four to six years. Servers, storage, and backup add considerable cost on top of the equipment purchase.
We wish that were all you needed, but you must also secure a backup drive, uninterrupted power supplies, software licensure, backup software, and many more items.
Why not let River City Data handle the cost of servers and storage? Partnering with us allows you to select your investment more judiciously–saving money and time.
Who should I trust to scan my documents?
A company with a long-standing reputation for quality and trustworthiness is your best option. River City Data has been scanning highly sensitive documents for over three decades for courts, hospitals, and businesses. Trust only the best with your sensitive materials.
What does document management and conversion cost today?
Companies spend significant amounts of money and person-hours managing volumes of information and documents generated within their businesses. Why not spend these resources on what your company does best: serving customers, engaging with your audience, or selling products?
Outsourcing your document conversion and management function to River City Data allows your organization to maximize internal operating efficiencies and focus resources on what is most important — your organization’s goals.
How do I find the right document and information management partner?
River City Data is part of a large global industry focused on providing organizations with document and information management solutions. River City Data is a central Minnesota based company, headquartered in New London, MN.
Our mission is to provide your organization with a quality, comprehensive document management system, and with secured storage outsourcing solutions.
These solutions include document scanning, image hosting/application services provider, secured vital document storage, document destruction, microfilm to digital image conversion, and consulting services.
As your organization’s document and information management partner, River City Data offers your company a complete outsourcing solution from start to finish.
How can River City Data help my bottom line?
Does it make sense for your business to consider a River City Data outsourcing solution? To answer this question, first, you must determine if an imaging solution better positions your organization for success versus its current paper-based document management system.
In addition to the real costs listed below, your organization should also consider cycle time and any time lost due to the use of a paper-based management system.
Which system is best: Imaging solution or paper-based document management system?
After determining if an imaging solution better positions your organization for success, you must evaluate a collaborative solution from a valued partner versus the investment in an in-house management system.
Your company should also discover which elements of your paper-based system would still be required to support an in-house management system. Consider the following expenses as you make your decision:
Fixed Costs
- On-site filing cabinets and storage shelves
- Price per square foot of physical space for storage
- Off-site filing cabinets and storage shelves
- Off-site storage facility fees
- Cost of equipment and supplies (files and boxes, carts, folders, labels, etc.)
Labor
- Cost of staff dedicated to document management, including contractual and temporary staff
- Total average staff hours to review, index, and file documents
- Total average staff hours to search, retrieve, and return documents
- Total average staff hours used to retrieve and manage off-site materials
- Total average staff hours to search for misfiled or misplaced records
- Cost of total average staff hours to retrieve, copy information from, and re-file documents.
If you determined that an imaging solution from an outsourcing partner better positions your organization for success, then River City Data can help you build a better bottom line.
Through its comprehensive package of document and information management services, River City Data can provide a simple collaborative solution that fits your organization.
Outsourcing vs. in-house scanning.
Every organization should consider the pros and cons of outsourcing digitization projects or conducting them in-house. We recommend a visit to vendor facilities to ensure that the workspaces provided can serve your unique situation. Consider the following for in-house and outsourcing your document scanning, conversion, archiving, storage, and retrieval:
Outsourcing:
- Cost savings for equipment and staffing
- High production levels
- On-site expertise
- Vendor absorbs the costs of technology obsolescence, failure, downtime, etc.
- Customized contracts dependent on your precise needs and budget
In-House:
- Significant initial and ongoing financial investment in equipment and staff
- Longer implementation time for imaging process and technical infrastructure
- Limited production level
- Staffing expertise not always available
- Costs incurred for network downtime, equipment failure, training of staff, etc.
Costs
Predicting just how much a digital imaging project is going to cost is challenging. Little hard data on the cost-effectiveness and expenses over some time is readily available. Generally, capture and conversion of data comprise only one-third of the total costs, while cataloging, description, and indexing make up the difference.
Upfront and ongoing costs are significant. Collaborative initiatives or cooperative/regional digitization initiatives can dramatically increase efficiency with document projects. This way, costs, resources, goals, and expertise can be shared.
The investment in equipment, training, document capture and conversion handling, archiving originals, producing derivative files, cataloging, building image databases and systems, and developing web interfaces must all be considered when budgeting a project.
Further, the cost of a project continues long after conversion. An institution must commit the inclusion of the expenses of maintaining data and systems over time, media migration costs, and infrastructure costs.
