A Paper Mystery

Paper Retention-Mystery of our Age

By Kirk Tracy/ Owner of Mountain Scanners

I do not understand the process of putting a closed file in a file cabinet, then a box, then a storage area as many people do at the end of the year. You are essentially saving the paper but trapping or hiding the data into storage limbo, highlighted by slow and inaccurate retrieval.

Using paper as a medium to manage records is still the prevailing tool, despite our transformation to a “digital media” society. The paper file exists along with digital and other types of disparate content, e-mails, digital documents from Word or Excel, videos, Adobe files and so forth.

We sell Filebound ECM software that addresses this area of concern, but the point of this memorandum is to encourage paper file users to scan the files when closed instead of just filing the paper away.

So, the first step is scan the paper when the transaction is closed. Call up an Imaging Service Bureau, like Mountain Scanners, and have us pick up the paper, scan the file, and then return/destroy the paper. At the initial level, we return word searchable, indexed and Book Marked .PDF (Adobe) digital files. Every piece of information in closed files becomes available on your PC with a couple of clicks. All the time and effort spent in creating the file and data is now worth it.. Save the paper file if you want, but the key is freeing the data on those pages for easy accessibility at any point in the future.

· You have a digital copy for disaster protection
· You can research or even do data mining over all your closed files with a free reader
· You have eliminated risk. Retention schedules are no longer important, you always have the file
· As your business process goes from analog to digital, you can assimilate your archives into the system because you had the foresight to replace the paper with digital documents.
· You have eliminated the weakest link in records management, paper files.
In today’s business environment, we need instant access to the content of closed files and transactions…I think the first step in ECM is scanning Archival records and using OCR to free the information into a digital repository.