How are you storing data? Do you have a room full of filing cabinets? If your office space is a cave of paper, it may be time to consider moving into the digital storage age with legal scanning services.
If you’re contemplating transitioning to digital document management, contact River City Data for a free estimate. We’ll prepare and scan your documents, tag your information for easy searchability, and provide secure access for your employees and clients.
Why Would I Want to Change How I Store My Documents? Paper Feels So Safe and Familiar
There is something solid about holding onto the document you need. You keep your passport in hand while you’re waiting to go through airport security. You keep a copy of your birth certificate locked up.
Paper documents have undeniable value. They are also cumbersome and fragile.
Let’s compare traditional paper document storage to a digital option.
Digitized Documents Can Be Searched Easily
Can you quickly put your hands on a specific document? Perhaps you know precisely how your paper files are organized and can finger through the right file drawer to find that single sheet of paper.
You might have one or two members of your team that can accomplish this. Do you have staff whose primary duty is to locate information?
One limitation of paper files is the singular format. Files are usually arranged by an overarching organizational method, such as alphabetizing by name.
This singular format means that to search your files, you always start from the same point.
But what if you don’t want to search for a file by name? What if you need every file from a specific date or every file for a particular location?
Paper files can be difficult to search and cross-reference. By storing your data in a digital format, you will have access to search your data by whatever identifier you value.
Search by client name, case number, date, or any other filter. You can also add filters to search various subsets within a value.
Digitized Documents Can Be Shared Easily
If you want to share paper documents, you will likely be taking a trip to the copier machine. Once you’ve passed those copies around, you will have limited control over what happens to them next.
If a client or an employer misplaces a document, the information contained in that paper could be compromised.
Give your staff easy access to information with digital access to scanned documents. You can allow read-only access to those who need to be informed and editing access only to appropriate employees.
Scanned information can be shared quickly without going through reams of paper. Digital documents are less likely to be lost or accidentally shared with someone who shouldn’t have access.
Your Documents Can Be Accessed Remotely
Have you ever gotten to a meeting, opened your briefcase, and discovered you were missing the item you needed most?
If your documents are stored digitally, you will have access to them wherever you go. Don’t worry about hauling hundreds of pages around. Plus, you won’t have to worry about finding yourself unprepared for that meeting.
Your employees will spend less time trying to get their hands on documents and more time getting results for clients. And, if the staff needs to work from home or another remote location, electronic access is a must.
Is Paper Safer Because You Can Hold It In Your Hands?
If you keep your legal documents in filing cabinets, you probably lock them at night. And then lock the filing cabinet room. And then lock the building.
The physical act of turning a lock can help a person feel secure, but it doesn’t protect you from:
- Fire
- Flooding
- Mold
- Spills
- Unauthorized copies
If your filing cabinet room goes up in flames, what will you do?
If your legal documents have been scanned and saved electronically, a flood or fire in one location won’t result in a catastrophic data loss. When you give staff and clients read-only access to confidential documents, they can’t change, copy, or destroy them. And if you need someone to discontinue having access to a document, you don’t have to try to take back a piece of paper. You just push a few buttons.
Your documents will be safer in an encrypted file than they will in a filing cabinet. You’re still locking the doors at night; they’re just digital. And actually, you don’t have to lock them at all, because they stay inaccessible to anyone without authorization.
Why You Should Use Professional Legal Scanning Services
You’re ready to step into the digital storage age. But there’s so much paper copy to switch over!
Don’t waste human resources having employees stand around feeding the scanner. They have enough to do without taking on this task (don’t they?).
Legal scanning services provide an economical solution. You receive a dedicated team of single-taskers. They’ll work only on your conversion — and not stop to answer your phones.
The most important part of any great job is preparation. Your scanning service team will take the time to sort, repair, and remove staples from all those precious documents before scanning.
Your data will be scanned with state-of-the-art machines that are meant to handle large quantities of paper. Your office all-in-one was not made for this task.
Legal scanning service providers are experts at managing sensitive data. They stay up to the minute on compliance laws and are familiar with the legal industry.
Your information will be tagged by whatever search terms you choose. Imagine the time saved when your employees can type a few terms to retrieve exactly what they need.
If you choose document hosting and cloud storage, your data will be securely encrypted, yet ready at your fingertips. If you prefer to manage your own data, your documents can be loaded to a private drive that will be entirely in your control.
It’s time to advance your company through digital data management. Contact River City Data today for a free estimate of customized legal scanning services (and other services too!).
