The changes in working practices brought about by the Covid pandemic have brought a renewed focus on going paperless and digitisation of records. As an increasing number of employees work remotely, companies of all sizes and types are exploring ways to ensure that service levels are unaffected and to improve efficiency. This has brought document scanning to the forefront once again.
Understanding the costs of document scanning and calculating the return on investment can be incredibly challenging. Much of the inefficiency and cost that comes from paper based records is often hidden, or simply accepted as being just the way things have always been done.
If you are building a case for document scanning, demonstrating increased efficiency and reduced costs can be a struggle, we’ve taken a quick look at two areas that benefit from electronic document management which we know will allow you to effectively demonstrate the case for your digitisation project.
Increasing Efficiency, Driving Down Costs.
We’re all fully aware of how frustrating it can be searching the office for a document that you know exists and contains the information or evidence that you need to complete a task, when working remotely you may not even know that the document exists let alone where it may be.
Calculating time lost searching for information is a difficult task, first of all there is the cost of employee time. The International Data Corporation found that employees spend as much as 2.3 hours per week searching for documents and a further 2 hours per week recreating documents that can’t be found.
For an organisation with 12 employees working 48 weeks per year with an average (very conservative) hourly cost per employee of £25, this quickly adds up to a direct cost of over £60,000 per annum. Also consider the lost earning potential along with customer frustration waiting for a response, delays in production etc. this is a worrying, yet often invisible statistic.
The above focuses directly on making sure that the right information can be found quickly yet further efficiency gains can be made through the implementation of systems to make full use of the now electronic information. For example, workflow solutions for scanned documents, giving accounts payable departments the ability to automatically route invoices from receipt, through approval and to payment.
Regardless of the department or employee function, electronic documents are always on hand and can be quickly yet securely accessed from any internet enabled device, reducing costs and increasing productivity and profitability.
Office Space & Storage Costs.
There has always been a strong cost argument for removing archive documents from the office, it is always more cost effective to store them off-site than in filing cabinets on-site. The drawback is that if the off-site archive isn’t properly managed and an annual destruction process isn’t carried out, the archive can grow, as can the associated costs.
Once scanned, assuming the scanning is carried out properly, the originals can be destroyed immediately, instantly freeing up space while minimising storage costs.
Coupled to a decrease in space requirements due to employees working remotely, this space can be used for other business functions enabling growth without increased overheads, or it can enable the organisation to downsize the office or even move into flexible serviced offices.
Conclusions.
While the above is fairly simplistic, it demonstrates how scanning can increase efficiency and drive down costs, of course further improvements can be leveraged but that will become very specific to document type and/or function.
Ready to start a conversation about your scanning project? Contact us by email help@bcdm.co.uk or give us a call on 0800 371212 and we’ll discuss the best way forward with you.