Turn on the Power with Agile ECM

The only thing worse than having to pay to convert (scan) your documents from paper to electronic images is when you have to do it twice.  This summer a customer decided to save some money and hire a couple of college students to scan their case files during the summer.  A noble thought and a practical way to put interns to work.  Just plug the machines in, point to the cabinets and let them “have at it”.  Afterall, the cost of a couple scanners and 2-3 hungry college students would be certainly less than paying a firm that specializes in this service, right?

However, a recent query of the files (all with “Scanned” boldly stamped in red on each case file jacket) found that a 7 page document (with 3 pages that were double sided) only had 7 images and not the 10 (7+3) it should have.  Other files were double in size as the “blank page drop out” feature was not activated on the scanner.  Several documents still had staples in them: meaning a second page of the document (possibly) was not scanned and a metal staple was pulled through the machine which leads to damaged parts, paper jams and scratched glass surfaces on the scanner.  Scanning appears to be easy, but without proper knowledge, training, supervision, quality checks and experience it can make a difficult task even more difficult to fix.  Remember the old addage, “Garbage in, Garbage out”?

In today’s economy everyone should be looking for the most economical way to accomplish their goal, but not at the cost of quality, especially when it comes to mission critical, historical, or personal data.  We are now re-scanning the entire project.

Work with a vendor to find the best solution, do business with a creative firm that can think outside the box and create a budget friendly solution (i.e. maybe you don’t need to scan everything right away and a hybrid storage “scan on demand” solution may be able to meet your needs?) Look for a vendor that has more than 3-5 years of hands on experience and can give you specific references (my company has been scanning since 2000 and can provide an active list of at least 10 customers we are currently working with).

Hungry college kids are great (I have two of them) and can perform many tasks very well, but there is more to scanning than dropping documents into a feeder and hitting the start button.  The care of your mission critical, historical and personal records are your responsibility, if you have a ”back file” of information you need scanned make sure you have have the expertise and are able to put into place the quality checks, procedures necessary for a great job… or hire a great company (like mine) that offers you a money back guarantee so you will never have to pay twice!

For more information, contact Unity Scanning Systems today!

The salesperson says that they can store your boxes in their facility for pennies per month.  The facility looks like Fort Knox – is heated in the winter and cooled in the summer, video surveillance (armed guards, with helicopters and dogs) and exceeds all fire and safety codes.

But then they pull out the five page contract with the “other” fees:  Set-up the account fee, pick up the boxes fee, “handle the box” fee (every transaction has this fee) close the account fee, a fee for the different levels of how they will bill you, (yes, they are charging you to bill you).  Then what happens if you need a file that you have stored with that company?  You guessed it…more fees: pull the file fee, scan a file fee, deliver the file (with 4-6 different escalating fee choices), return the original to the file fee, destroy the file fee (of course add the “handle the box fee” at each point here)  Now you know why the facility looks like Fort Knox, you are paying for it.  It’s kind of like once you give the box to them those files are held as hostages and if you ever wish to see them again you are going to have to pay.

Unity Scanning & Storage has a different approach.  We have a great “Fort Knox” facility (uhm… except the guards are not armed and there are no helicopters or dogs).  Yes, you are paying for it too, however, we set up a reasonable up front fee that takes into account that you will need some percentage of access to your files.   While within that percentage there are no extra fees, none, period.  This gives you a simple, no surprise, budgetable solution that can save you a significant amount of money.

A budgetable figure, with a safe, secure facility and no surprises?

Call our hostage files negotiation team at 888-400-9064 and we will make “IT easy” to break free! Or visit us at www.UnityScanningSystems.com .

The other day while visiting a customer I thought I was going to have to quickly find a Kleenex or a fire extinguisher. She was at the point of an emotional rage-enduced breakdown.  What was the cause?  Microfiche.  Tight resources has everyone in this public office doing double duty anyway, but the constituents are always first.  So in the middle of tackling the normal daily challenges she gets a call, “I need a copy of a resolution that I think was made in 1979.”  “Yes, ma’am, can you narrow down the date to a month?”  “Oh honey, I don’t even know if I got the right year!”  So what does this mean for our duty bound hanky-in-hand warrior?

Slaying the Dinosaur!

Descending the steps to it’s chamber our warrior steals her resolve, “I will not fail…this time!”  Turning the corner she spies her nemesis sitting nonchalantly next to a file cabinet that bears its “children.” Offspring of another era, wrapped in tight little rolls with dates ranging from yesterday to the early 1900′s.  Somewhere in there the information lies, the challenge is coaxing it out from among thousands of images on a machine that has no readily accessible spare parts and for which most repair stores only sigh at when requested to give aide.  Three hours later the “resolution” is found and our gallant warrior, exhilarated, calls her constituent to claim the prize – only to discover that the constituent’s grandson already found it on the web.  Fire extinguisher!

There has got to be an easier way!  Convert those images into an electronic image that can be saved and indexed onto a shared drive, or better yet, placed into a Enterprise Content Management System (ECM), that makes finding these resources not only easily accessible on your computer but in most cases can be emailed to the constituent before they hang up the phone.  Then have an office party and move the slain dragon outside and send it to retirement with its long lost friend the mimeograph machine!