A Guide to Document Scanning

Jump to a section:

1. How the document scanning process works

2. How document scanning can improve compliance

3. How document scanning can transform the customer experience

4. In-house document scanning

5. Outsourced document scanning

6. Bulk scanning or scan-on-demand?

7. Why TrustFlow Digital Solutions?

8. How TrustFlow Digital Solutions has helped customers with document scanning

How the document scanning process works

1. Consultation: A team of document scanning experts will assess and discuss your requirements with you in order to provide the most efficient and cost-effective solution.

2. Collection: Your documents can be collected directly from your premises and transported safely and securely to our scanning bureau. All documents are checked in and barcoded, allowing you to track your documents throughout the scanning process.

3. Production: Documents are prepared for scanning in a secure environment ensuring full protection of any critical data. Our experienced scanning operators prepare the documents by removing of any staples and paperclips.

4. Scan: Documents are scanned using state-of-the-art machines. The process is fully compliant to industry requirements. Key data is captured using Intelligent Capture Recognition (ICR) technology and is classified.

5. Quality: All information that is digitized undergoes a strict quality assurance process. The data is managed with industry-specific compliance standards.

6. Storage: Data is securely stored in EDMonline and/or can be delivered to your core systems for access.

7. Archive or Destruction: Your physical documents are either archived or destroyed based on your retention policy using accredited protocols.

How document scanning and digitizing can help:

Improve compliance

Insurance, healthcare and financial organizations specifically, should review whether or not the data they handle is fully compliant. Organizations in these sectors handle a great deal of personal data on a daily basis - from patient records to sensitive financial information - and more often than not, this data is in physical paper format, which can pose a number of compliance risks if handled incorrectly.

All patient data must be compliant with the principles of HIPAA and retention periods must be applied. It is also equally important that data that is no longer required is securely erased regardless of whether in paper or digital format. There has been an increase in a requirement for ‘lift the lid’ projects where boxes that have been stored in archives, in some cases for decades, are being retrieved for an inventory to be created of its contents allowing organizations to apply retention and take appropriate action.

However, doing all of this as a manual process and with paper records can become increasingly overwhelming. Scanning your business-critical documents can help you manage your sensitive data much more easily. Additionally, digitized documents will make it easier for your organization to conduct audits on what information is being stored, for how long and when and if it needs to be destroyed.

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Transform the customer experience

Organizations are under immense pressure to enable customer-centric growth through strong relationships with customers; whilst simultaneously delivering continuous improvement through the effective use of technology to improve the customer experience. There are many ways to achieve this, one of which is to deliver a digital transformation program in your organization, however, the fastest and most cost-effective way to start is with a document scanning solution to digitize documents.

The threat of constant new entrants and disruptors to the market who provide a seamless digital customer experience offer up a challenge to other organizations to transform and bring themselves into a new digital era.

It’s clear that paper processes are outdated and inevitably slow down customer experience. 

Digitization of documents is not only a gateway into introducing more digital processes resulting in improved organizational efficiency and cost-savings, but can also improve the customer's experience and thus giving you a competitive advantage. Benefits include:

• Improved processes - to reduce customer response times
• Cost-cutting - to enable you to be more competitive
• Faster account origination
• Integrating data to understand customer journeys and behavior to deliver more personalized and relevant communications
• Freed-up time for front-office staff to perform revenue-generating activities, instead of focusing on operational tasks
• Encouraging a culture embracing “digital”

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Which type of document scanning is best for your business?

In-house document scanning

If your organization has the capability to scan a high volume of documents in-house, then this is certainly an option to consider. However, many organizations will have a number of legacy and active documents that need to be scanned and standard multi-functional devices found in most office places are limited and slow.

As part of this you need to have the following:

• The right scanning equipment
• The resources to undertake both the preparation and scanning of documents
• An understanding of your indexing requirements
• A clear understanding of the deadlines of documents to be scanned
• Whether your organization is meeting compliance standards
• Quality checking and indexing capabilities which can be extremely time-consuming 
• For digitized images to be legally admissible in court, you will need to scan at an appropriate resolution

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Outsourced document scanning

"By outsourcing you are handing over a huge administrative task to professionals."

Your other option is to outsource document scanning to professionals who have the knowledge, experience and skills to undertake large-scale projects. Outsourcing is usually recommended for large-scale digitization projects and is generally faster and more affordable than trying to do it in-house.

It is important to select an outsourcing company that understands your sector and all the compliance and regulatory nuances that really matter to your organization.

"Outsourcing” may sound like a risk in that you will be handing over important and private documents in order to digitize, however, your organization can gain some much-needed value and benefits:

• You will get best practices for medical records scanning
• Using a supplier who has access to best-in-class equipment
• Reduced costs compared to scanning documents in-house
• Increased security for both your physical and digital records
• True representation of the original documents
• Easier to plan and budget
  

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Bulk scanning or a scan-on-demand solution? Which is best for your business?

More businesses are being driven to pick up the pace of their digital transformation projects. As such, it means looking at different types of solutions that can assist in digitizing various processes. One of the solutions being adopted is document scanning. However, there are different ways to achieve digitization of your mission-critical documents, two of which are bulk document scanning and scanning your documents 'on demand'.

In order to understand whether you need bulk scanning or a scan-on-demand solution, you should ask yourself the following:

1. How often do you need to access the documents?
2. How quickly do you need access to the documents?
3. Do you need the original version at hand or will a digital version suffice?
4. Are the documents required to be kept within their retention period?
5. Do you know what retention period should be applied?

Learn how bulk document scanning and digitization will benefit your business. Request a quote from our experts today.

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Why TrustFlow Digital Solutions?

We are the leading provider of document scanning and digitization services. We have the capacity to provide bulk scanning digitization and data capture services, fulfilling high-volume requirements for our clients.

Digitizing hundreds of millions of documents annually, means we have transformed analog communications into digital data through our specialist scanning facilities and over many decades of experience.

We have not only helped our clients become paper-free but we have also:

• Lowered operating costs
• Increased productivity
• Improved quality
• Raised compliance standards

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The TrustFlow Digital Solutions team brings deep expertise in handling large-scale paper document scanning and digitization projects as well as working with unique mediums like microfiche and microfilm. 

Read the full Case Study now » TrustFlow Digital Solutions digitizes over 25 million microfiche images for one of the largest insurance companies in the US

The Challenge

• The customer was required to retain and preserve millions of images, records and archived documents stored on microfiche.
• The manual process to access information when it was needed and the omnipresent risk of losing the original records to damage or deterioration became a pain point.
• Aiming to mitigate risk and become more operationally efficient, the customer set out to digitize and migrate the important records housed on microfiche into digitally accessible, indexed data that could be easily viewed on laptops, tablets or mobile phones.

The TrustFlow team worked closely with the customer to develop a detailed plan for transporting, scanning, converting, indexing and exporting over 25 million microfiche images. In January 2020, the first group of files was inventoried, labeled, secured and transported to a temperature-controlled area within TrustFlow's facility. Initial manual reviews and quality checks were completed on each microfiche jacket before scanning. Repairs were made as needed and hundreds of customer documents were saved through this process.

Exception handling and scan-on-demand services were also included in the project scope. The customer was able to request a digital version of any microfiche image not yet scanned and indexed, and the TrustFlow Digital Solutions team delivered any requested files to the customer within 24 hours.

Click to read the Case Study now »

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