September 12th 
Comments Whether you’re looking for ways to reduce costs on your next outsourced document scanning project, or control costs on your ongoing in-house document scanning processes, you need to take a broad look at what “cost” really means.
Broadly speaking, every document scanning project includes three stages:
- Preparation: select documents to be scanned, remove staples and paper clips, sort the documents and arrange the papers into batches. This is labor-intensive work. According to estimates from Document Management magazine, the preparation stage accounts for 37% of the costs of a typical document scanning project.
- Scanning: Inputting the documents, scanning and capturing the images, and making any adjustments or corrections to the images.
- Post-scan processing: Quality assurance, indexing the metadata, creating optical character recognition, distributing the final images for storage and possibly reassembling the files. Post-scan processing is also labor-intensive, and typically accounts for 39% of the costs of document scanning.
So how can your organization reduce the cost of document scanning?
There are several key components in managing your costs:
Choose the right scanner. We’ve written before about choosing a scanner, but beyond the operational and technical details, choosing the right scanner has serious cost implications as well. Some cost-conscious managers might be reluctant to pay top dollar for a high quality scanner, but spending more money upfront can often save you money in the long run, due to higher efficiency, ease of use, and lower maintenance costs.
For example, every time a lower-cost scanner fails to capture an image, that results in added cost (labor, time, rescans, wasted effort). A single high quality, high speed scanner might be able to replace two or more slower, lower-quality scanners and reduce labor costs by removing the need for an extra scanner operator.
Some scanners are easier to maintain than others. If a scanner is hard to clean and maintain, with hard-to-reach parts and a hard-to-operate design, then chances are your employees will be less likely to give it the regular maintenance it needs, leading to a higher probability of downtime and expensive service calls.
Make sure you understand the meaning of “throughput.” Throughput is frequently used as a measure of scanner quality, since this statistic shows how much paper will pass through a scanner. However, don’t look only at the “raw transport speed,” but also consider how long it realistically takes to scan mixed batches of documents of different shapes and sizes. You can’t expect to get an accurate measure of throughput based only on ideal conditions when all the paper is the same size and consistency. Also, when calculating throughput, be sure to recognize that the scanner will not be running 24/7: allow for work breaks, work discussions and maintenance time. Speed is not the only important measure of success. After all, many cars’ speedometers show 160 miles per hour, but what do you really achieve in traffic?
Ultimately, document scanning will hopefully be a positive investment for your organization, as there are many costs associated with working with paper files and archives that can be eliminated by switching to digital files. But as you prepare to embark on a large-scale document scanning project, keep in mind that the true drivers of cost can be best managed with the right people, the right processes, and a smart understanding of the trade-offs between quality and speed.
Related Posts
- How efficient is your document scanning operation?
- When NOT to use barcodes for your document conversion project
- Aperture card scanning process – quality control
- The 5 biggest benefits of document scanning
- 6 questions to help choose a scanner for your business (part 2)
Learn more about how microMEDIA can fulfill your imaging services needs.