Is your office full of papers, folders and overflowing filing cabinets? If you need to find an important printed document for a meeting, would you be able to source its location in a reasonable timeframe? Or would you spend 20 minutes searching for it amongst the rest of the papers all over your office? Or even worse still, if you can’t find the document at all? Murphy’s Law usually mandates that the document you can’t find is the one you need most of all. The fact of the matter is, while some documents do need to be printed and stored, most can be digitised, which has some great advantages for your business. Not only does digitising your data reduce costs and save you time, you’ll also regain much-needed office space – after all a cluttered office is a less productive office.
What is digitisation?
So what exactly is digitising? Essentially, when you digitise data, you’re taking all your projects and processes and managing them in digital form. You probably already digitise your data in one way or another, for example through email, Word documents and Excel spreadsheets etc. However, digitising data can also refer to converting hardcopies into digital forms, such as scanning documents and uploading them to your computer or the cloud.
What are the benefits of digitising data?
There are a whole range of benefits that come with digitising your data. Here are just a few.
Your data is centralised in a format of your choice
Whatever your preference, when you digitise your data, you can choose to format it however you like. Fuji Xerox Printers’ devices allow you to scan a hardcopy document and convert it into a format of your choosing (pdf, searchable pdf, Word or Excel), in a central location of your choice. Fuji Xerox Printers’ flexible processes allow you to get the most out of your archived data.
Save money
By digitising your documents, you will greatly help your business cut costs. If you want to save a significant amount of money, by digitising your documents, you could have a smaller office, as you’ll have less physical documents to store. Furthermore, you’ll also be saving on paper and toner.
Save time
When you store your documents digitally, you are saving yourself and your employees from hours of printing, sorting and filing. And, digitising your documents means you will be able to find what you’re looking for quicker. Instead of rummaging through bursting filing cabinets and folders, you only need to do a quick search on your computer. It’s a good idea to agree on a standardised digital filing and naming system so that everyone in the office can find documents quickly and easily. Even if a digitised file “goes missing” a search by a keyword contained within the document will usually find where it’s hiding.
Reduce risk
Any document that passes through your business, incoming or outgoing, has its own measure of due diligence attached to it. Proof of deliveries, signed contracts, receipts, HR documents, invoices, correspondence, and even photographs have associated risk to the business if they’re not captured and catalogued correctly.
Regain office space
As we mentioned, with fewer documents needing to be stored, you can regain some of your office space. When you and your employees are buried in archived and unnecessary documents, that’s a lot of high overheads and wasted office space. Think about it like this: you wouldn’t keep older computers lying around that don’t serve a purpose except for ‘just in case’ scenarios, right? There isn’t a reason to waste office space with documents and filing cabinets you don’t use.
Advance data security
The truth is that printed documents are vulnerable to loss, damage, curious eyes and even theft. When you store your data online (either via Google Drive, the Cloud etc.) you are able to set strict security restrictions to protect your data from all sorts of data security risks. You can set passwords to prevent opening a document, and also protect against any unauthorised changes.
Putting digitised data to work
Now that you know the benefits of digitising your data, here is how you can start making it work for your business.
How to digitise data
When you purchase a Fuji Xerox multifunction device or scanner, you’ll be able to scan documents and upload them to a server of your choice within minutes. You can set up one touch buttons that automatically saves documents in the format you need, and in a location of your choice. It’s simple, quick and once you’ve started digitising your data, you’ll wonder how you ever managed without it.
Decide where to store your data
Your business probably already uses one or more cloud-based storage sites like Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive or Office 365 to store and share your business documents. Decide which service works best for your business and then make sure your employees all use the same one. If the cloud isn’t your thing you can store it directly to an external hard drive for immediate backup for you safety and security.
Safely get rid of digitised documents
To keep your data secure, it’s a good idea to shred all sensitive paper documents once you have scanned, saved and successfully stored them. You can either shred them in your office, or if you have many documents to get rid of, use a shredding service.
If you want to save your business time and money, you can’t go past the benefits of digitisation. If you’re not sure whether you need a multifunction device with a scan functionality or a dedicated scanner book in a hands on Fuji Xerox product demonstration.
