What Is Document Imaging?
Download the complete white paper now.
The paper explosion
Even though we've been striving for the "paperless" office for many years, it seems as if we
are generating exponentially more paper on a daily basis. It has been estimated that organizations
double the amount of paper they are filing every 10 years, with each worker generating
an estimated 45 - 15,000 sheets of paper per day.
The problems with all of this paper are myriad. Paper files are hard to find, as the document you may need may be misfiled, in use by another employee, or lost. It also costs a significant amount of money to file and maintain all of this paper. An average 4-drawer file cabinet can hold approximately 15,000 sheets. It costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $10,000 to fill a 4-drawer file cabinet, and another $26,000 in retrieval labor per year for maintenance, plus it costs approximately $30 per square foot just to house that same 4-drawer file cabinet in the office.
Document imaging is a method of transforming all of this paper into easily retrievable electronic files that can be shared across an organization, permitting simultaneous use, and increasing employee productivity significantly. Studies have shown that the average document in an organization is photocopied 19 times, with 25% of the filing time for that document being spent in walking to and from the photocopier. Electronic documents can be accessed immediately worldwide, and can be easily printed right at the desktop, eliminating all that wasted time. This can increase employee productivity by up to 20-30%.
The goal of converting paper documents to electronic form is to provide a seamless flow of critical information throughout the organization, reducing document handling costs, storage space requirements, and providing enhanced security of the documents.