Listen! Can you hear that? Yes, that empty, echoey sound. Don’t recognise it, do you? Allow us to remind you – it’s called silence, something that for home workers and parents has been sorely lacking over the last few weeks. Now the kids are back at school, life can get back to normal. If you are working from home or going back to the office again take this opportunity to clear your working spaces and give yourself or your business more room to breathe – you will feel much better for it!

Spring may be the traditional time for a clear out, but we think September is a much more sensible option. After all, you’ve undoubtedly got an office that’s been rather neglected since that final school bell rang way, waaaaay back in July. Having a back-to-school / back-to-work clear out is pretty therapeutic (honest) and will at the very least help you delay the start of actual work for a day or two.

So, how can we help? Well, one thing we offer here at Scan Film or Store is the gift of space i.e. document scanning. We can scan anything from the contents of lever arch files to receipts, old bank statements, large technical drawings, archived employee records to… well, you get the picture. Anything that’s currently clogging up dusty shelves, filing cabinets or quite possibly whole rooms where no one dares to venture.

Here’s the science bit:

• We use top quality Kodak and Canon document scanning equipment and are ISO 9001 certified, so you’ll always get accurate, high-quality results.
• We can output digital images in .pdf, pdf/a, .tif or .jpg format, in colour, greyscale or black and white.
• We also offer a full indexing service and optical character recognition (OCR) of .pdf documents, creating ‘digital filing cabinets’ and readable, searchable documents.

Really helpful, right?

There are then three options for the originals. We could give them back to you, although that would rather defeat the object. Instead, option two is that we can store them in our secure, dry and protected premises in Bridgwater. We use an advanced barcode tracking system, logging everything within our auditable document storage system, so they’ll always be easy to find and retrieve.

Or, option three, if you don’t actually need your originals anymore, is that we can destroy them for you. And we don’t mean chuck them in the bin out back – this is high tech stuff, with cross shredding and pulping (the pulp is then recycled, so it’s good for the environment too!). We can also destroy CDs and DVDs, computer hard drives, microfilm and lots of other things, so do add those to you ‘get rid of’ list too.

If you need help decluttering your home or office, call us free on 0800 008 7229 or contact us here and we can talk you through the best options to suit your needs and your budget (the initial chat is free and without obligation, of course). After all, it’ll be Christmas before you know it, so you need to make room for all those presents!

 

 

 

As more companies offer their staff either fully remote or hybrid working their HR, Finance and Quality departments have had to adapt the way they work to enable staff to access their documents from home.

5 reasons to scan your HR and other vital documents-

1. Remote/Hybrid (office & home) working

Businesses that offer staff remote, or hybrid, working have to ensure that all authorised staff can access documents that they need to fulfil their role and contribute to the ongoing productivity of the company they work for.

Utilising Cloud storage solutions scanned documents are available all day, every day, from both home and office locations and allow business teams to work together on the same documents. This is the best solution for both the business and staff member – a better work/life balance for the staff and a happier, more productive employee for the business.

2. Easy to find documents

Replicating existing filing systems and file structures makes finding documents much easier – no more scrabbling around in dark and dusty archive storerooms! Indexing (naming) the files by following protocols already known and understood by staff means the retrieval of vital documents becomes effortless. Mix this with the application of OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to the scanned documents and vast databases of information can be interrogated for words or phrases wherever they appear in HR, Finance or Quality files reducing time spent searching and improving efficiency.

Documents that have been scanned and integrated into business systems play a major part in Digital Transformation in a business, increasing efficiency, reducing document processing time and of course costs.

3. Scanning improves document security

With changes to the world climate increasing dramatically the occurrence of fires and floods is an increasing threat to paper documents as neither fire or floods are good for them! Combine that with the ever-present threat of damage or theft it is important to reduce the risk of permanent loss of vital or irreplaceable data.

By scanning documents, the risks are greatly reduced as digital files can be backed up to external hard drives or encrypted cloud storage creating peace of mind and business continuity in the event of loss or damage.

4. Free up office space and reduce operating costs

Many businesses, post-COVID, are reducing their office footprints by introducing ‘hot desks’ for hybrid staff and this, along with remote working staff, results in companies needing less space. At the same time companies are significantly saving costs, reducing the space used for storing hard copy original documents by scanning their document archives.

5. GDPR retention policies

It is easier to achieve retention policies using documents that have been scanned rather than the paper files as varied document types can be both quickly found and the process of renewal or updating documents can be managed more effectively, saving time for the business teams accessing the documents.

At the time this blog was put together the press was full of large-scale data breaches of very sensitive personal data – huge issues for the organisations who were supposed to be protecting the data. Whilst some of the breaches were down to ‘human error’ the fundamental fact remains that personal and business critical data when held in a secure digital environment is much safer than a hard copy document archive often out of sight of scrutiny and more often not even secured. GDPR requirements are legion and getting them wrong can be a very costly experience.

For more information on GDPR go to https://www.gov.uk/data-protection

If your company is looking to get documents scanned we can help, see our scanning process.

We collect throughout the South West, South East and Midlands and can provide a no obligation (free) cost estimate for your project. Contact our team today!