When to Start Archiving Business Documents

When do you start archiving business records with a document storage company, or in your own warehouse or scanning those documents?

More often than not, businesses or organisations reach the point of document storage, archival or scanning when life becomes unbearable; it need not come to this! As with all things in life, we do things only when we absolutely have to but take a little time to consider your existing operations & you could see the benefits straight away.  That’s the tip, take the time to consider how you do things & whether it can be done better.

Archiving business documents properly can save you time

• What is the cost of that missing or lost document? 
• So, what questions should you be asking yourself?  The first should be about time:
• How many working hours are actually spent maintaining your documents?
• If a member of staff has to retrieve a file, how long does this process really take?
• Does retrieving a document take second or 5 minutes?
• Is retrieving your document from storage productive time?
• What would you prefer your staff to be spending this time on?
• What is the time spent by your staff filing, retrieving & shredding?
• What is the cost of that missing or lost document?
• How long do your staff spend scanning documents at the printer?
• How long do your staff spend indexing documents whether in storage or scanning?
• Would these scanned documents be legally admissible?

The answer to these questions & many more will soon tell you that you need your own archive, you need the services of a document storage company or you need document scanning.

Cost & access will largely define whether you archive in-house or go do down the outsourced Document Storage route or whether you decide scanning your documents is the best approached.

Do you have room for all your documents?

It is surprising but in our experience cost is not the driver behind moving your documents off-site or scanning them.  It is very much space.  Organisations will only decide to take action once the number of boxes or filing cabinets make life untenable.

However, I would assume if a quick cost-benefit analysis would probably help speed up this process & this will have the following impacts:

• Allow staff to focus on core activities
• Will reduce costs
• Will increase revenue

How to calculate the cost of archiving business documents

So, here is a simple model that will allow to calculate the cost to your business of archiving business documents:

• Cost of space associated with storage (not only yardage but physical storage space & security associated)
• Cost of staff time associated with locating, reviewing & returning files
• Logistical cost of moving files to & from location
• Cost of missing or damaged files

Against:

• Cost of outsourced document storage
• Cost of document scanning
• Cost of document management system

And:

Revenue generated from new free space through increased productivity (from increase in human or machine capacity or improved working environment)

More often than not, the benefits will far outweigh inaction.

Have you had issues?

Have you, or your business been affected by any issues mentioned in this post? If so, feel free to leave a comment below.

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