Difficult Documents, Simple Solution

Chicago Records Management increased its digital document scanning productivity by three to five times for one of their key customers. Now they process documents more quickly with fewer resources using OPEX’s Universal Document Scanning Workstation, Falcon®.

Rapid growth can be a boon for a small company, but it also brings many challenges along with it. With growth comes an increase in volume and demand, and to meet that demand, companies often have to invest in labor, technology, or both.

That certainly was the case at Chicago Records Management, Inc. (CRM). CRM provides document management solutions to a wide range of customers. These solutions include off-site storage, document imaging, and online content management. The company also offers data protection services such as tape vaulting and online back-up capabilities.

CRM provides services to a number of growing businesses across a variety of vertical markets, but one marketing customer, in particular, was expanding rapidly. The client's document imaging needs were also growing quickly, so they asked CRM if they could increase the speed and volume of the scanning operation to keep pace with their digital document requirements. This presented a challenge as the materials involved were difficult to scan and required a significant amount of manual handling.

The requirements for this marketing client include capturing every side of every sheet of paper in the exact order that end users would read the documents. These materials include books, envelopes, paper, trifold brochures, as well as other documents. “What made this challenging was that for 90 percent of what we scanned, we could only use a flatbed scanner. Those items just couldn’t go through a document feeder,” says Bob Maiers, vice president at CRM.