Saving Money on Documentation

Today, most companies are reducing their workforce and reviewing their operation costs to determine ways to help their bottom line. Document storage and retrieval could certainly be a legitimate area for a company to reduce their costs. However reducing costs at the expense of system integrity could spell business and financial disaster.

Many companies have critical data that needs to be kept, and must have access to them. Companies are doing document storage to either reduce business risks or to maintain regulatory compliance. There are a number of options that companies have to meet their document storage and retrieval needs.

Internal vs. Outsourcing

While many organizations store and control documents internally, there could be some compelling reasons for outsourcing. One should consider the following factors:

* Space: As companies reduce and merge facilities, space becomes a premium. Manufacturing, offices, conference room, product inventory all require space. Document storage should probably be one of the first options considered for outsourcing when space is an issue and may be one of least costly option to consider.
* Security: The needed security depends on the type of information being stored. Internal systems may be more lax than desired. Most companies are not in the security business, so business records are very vulnerable to sabotage or compromise. On the other hand, many document storage companies have state-of-the-art security systems that can comply with all the applicable regulations. These systems can be very expensive for a business to duplicate for there own documentation storage purposes.
* Disaster Protection/Recover: Of all the assets that businesses need to sustain operations, their critical data may be the most difficult to recover and have the biggest consequences if lost. One needs to examine how protected their internal document storage system from fire or other natural or man-made disasters. Many reliable document storage companies have made significant investments to protect their facility from these catastrophic occurrences.
* Retrieval: It does not do any good to store a document securely, if one could not retrieve it when needed. Manual systems can be very slow and costly, where as a good document storage company uses the latest technologies in marking, organizing and tracking. Bar coding and RFID technology are used to the fullest extent to ensure rapid and reliable retrieval. It would not be cost effective for most businesses to invest in this technology for controlling and retrieving their documentation.

Paper vs. Electronic

There are many inherent advantages to electronic storage over paper; however the cost of converting to electronic can be prohibitive. Even with scanning and coding costs as low as a few cents per document, companies that have millions of documents can face a significant cost for such a project. The cost to store paper documents off site is highly dependent on level of service and volume of documentation. A rough estimate for cost ranges from $.75.00 to $2.00 per box per month. The cost of electronic storage is a fraction of that, but cost of conversion could range from $.01 to $.05 per document depending on level of indexing and type of documentation.

Scanning to images or to PDF formats are the two most common methods of converting paper documents to electronic data. Paper documents, microfilm, microfiche and aperture cards are the more common formats that are scanned to electronic data today.

Electronic documents are cheaper to store, require no physical space and are usually more efficient for retrieval. No large warehouses are required and storage and recovery is very fast. Still, even with these inherent advantages, businesses may still need to seek the aid of third party services to help effectively manage electronic documentation.

Security: The headline in Washintonpost.com reads "Report: Cybercrime is winning the Battle over Cyberlaw." The summary of the posting was that cybercrime prevention systems are not keeping up with the perpetrators. This is particularly true for the millions of desktops connected to the internet. We are virtually bombarded with viruses, malwares, phishing, hacking and other malicious attacks that could corrupt, damage or compromise data that are directly stored on our computers and even indirectly for entities that these computers are connected to. One report notes that most detection software that is commercially available today is inadequate to protect computers from the latest malware. The bottom line is that inadequate electronic data security could spell disaster. Many electronic data storage companies have the latest and most impenetrable security systems including encryption and intrusion detection. Companies that rely on there own internal technology and systems to secure their electronic data may be taking unwarranted risks. When your electronic data is critical, you should consider outside services to store and protect your electronic data.

Disaster Recover: Often times putting your documents in electronic format can create a false sense of security. Hard drives crash, resulting in potentially lost data. Reliable electronic data back up systems are needed for critical data. Many businesses have a simple manual backup system to a cd or dvd with on site storage. These systems are usually not safe from fire and employees may not follow the most rigorous standards in backing systems up. The worst time to find out if your back up system is inadequate is when you need it. Outsourcing your data back up can actually be more cost effective and certainly more reliable.

In today's economic crisis, companies may be tempted to reduce costs by skimping on document storage and retrieval systems. This tactic could result in unacceptable business risks as well as actually increasing overall costs. Proper planning and assessment not only could keep your risks at an acceptable level, but reduce both short term and long term costs.