Why Outsource Your Scanning??

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?”

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.