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With any reasonable volume of paper
involved, there is a strong business case to be made for
converting the documents to electronic form. Then the
question becomes “Do I try to perform this task in-house
or do I outsource it to a third-party?”
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Focus on
mission and core competencies – Before introducing an
in-house scanning solution, you should be asking “What’s
my core business / strengths?” and decide if scanning /
document management is one of them. Experts all agree
that your scarce resources should be focused on your core
business / strengths so if scanning solutions isn’t one of
them, then outsourcing your scanning makes sense.
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Conservation of
capital – High end scanning hardware and software is
expensive to buy, maintain, and routinely update.
Moreover, once a scanning solution is embraced, your
organization will rely on its continuous availability
which generally means acquiring multiple scanners for both
throughput and redundancy reasons and hence, consuming
more capital. If the management of more infrastructure
and tying up of additional capital does not appeal to you,
then outsourcing your scanning makes sense.
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Staffing –
There are numerous steps involved to ensure an effective
scanning solution. To properly execute this task
in-house, an outside consultant would likely need to be
engaged early on to map out a game plan, some of your
valuable staff would need to be dedicated to the function
and trained for same, there would need to be back-up
personnel in-place to cover-off during vacations / sick
days / termination, etc. There would also be an added
overhead on your IT department to support this function.
If best practices and efficient use of your human capital
are of interest to you, then outsourcing your scanning
makes sense.
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Space
utilization – To implement a scanning solution, secure
space needs to be established that allows for multiple
staging areas, equipment, staff and work-in-process
storage. If conservation of costly space is a
consideration for you, then outsourcing your scanning
makes sense.
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Speed of
execution – Considerable valuable time would need to
be spent trying to initially set up an in-house scanning
solution. When spikes in volumes occur, the in-house
solution would be over-taxed. If timely execution of
meeting your evolving document needs is of interest to
you, then outsourcing your scanning makes sense.
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