Several factors can be considered to determine the ROI of document imaging. Knowing and understanding such factors can help organizations know how to maximize their return on investments by considering the best ways to digitize paper documents for the organization.
If you want to determine the return on investments of document conversions, you have to decide at what point in the life cycle of the paper do you intend to do the scanning. It’s vital because paper loses its value when it moves through its life cycle. Not only that, as it also starts to incur hard costs for activities, such as storing, transporting, refiling and retrieving. If you want to reduce hard cost, you need to scan early in the life cycle of the paper.
It is also crucial for organizations to have good procedures and policies for handling paper records. The hard costs of an organization will become higher if they don’t have good procedures and policies in place. In addition to this, here are some ways to calculate the return investments for document imaging:
Ways to Calculate the ROI for Document Imaging
The Paper-related Costs. This is a great way to calculate your ROI for document imaging. Costs related to paper can be tallied by assessing some expenses, such as the following:
- Filing supplies, including folders and cabinets
- Toner, ink and other printing-related costs
- Offsite document storage rent
- Document shipping
- Paper cost itself
If you reduce paper from your business processes, it will usually produces the most immediate return on investment.
Save from Data Restoration Costs. The worst thing that can happen to your business or organization is data loss. It is frustrating enough to lose one file, but it is more devastating to lose thousands of them in a fire, floor or other natural disaster. Instead of cutting back on the unnecessary expenses your organization currently has, why don’t you invest in a disaster recovery plan instead? Through document imaging, you can save your business from millions of dollars worth of document restoration costs.
Save Time. It has been found that information workers often spend about twenty percent of their time searching through and filing paper documents. This means wasting ten hours each week looking for, but not finding, documents, which recreate lost documents and another time-consuming task. Such figures can be attributed to the issues inherent in the management of hard copy documents.
Integrating document management in a digital format allows companies to allot more time with the use of information and less time to finding them. Document imaging allows employees to instantly store and retrieve documents in a digital repository with just a simple search. With this, employees can be more productive in doing tasks that can help generate sales or increase their revenue. Digitized records across the business can save valuable time that would otherwise be wasted browsing through and filing documents in cabinets.
Consider these ways and calculate your own return investment and determine whether document management software is the ideal choice for you or not. Whether you want to outsource a document imaging project or find a software solution to manage your documents, we are here to help.