Your Company's "Return on Investment": Six Practical Reasons Why Your Company May Want to Consider Converting Physical Documents

SAN JOSE, CA, January 08, 2011 (Press-News.org) There are six practical and simple reasons your company may want to consider converting physical documents. The reasons for document conversion may involve many factors; some are easy to quantify in dollars and others can only be quantified through practical wisdom, evaluation and educated projections.

The Bottom-line....The Impact of Document Conversion on Your Companies Return on Investment!

1. DIRECT COST SAVINGS: Costs that are much easier to quantify include...
- People cost- Direct costs of clerical support and overheads including supervision to handle and move physical documents.
- Cost of all equipment and maintenance to print or copy
- Cost of paper, ink and toner
- Cost of postage soon to increase along with high delivery/courier costs
- Storage or Warehouse- cost of space, cabinets, filing folders, floor space, heat, lighting, filing, retrieval, re-filing, and penalties.
- Cost of risk - Recreating vital documents, higher audit expense, pressure to respond to governmental inquiries, Insurance against loss, backup
- Qualitative cost of slowing down business processes and retrieval.
- On an average, to file and maintain 500,000 pieces of paper, companies spend an estimated $515,000 (by JP Morgan, "Sustainable Treasury Management: It's Easier than you Think").

2. GOING GREEN: Reducing the environmental footprint by converting paper, microfilm and microfiche to digital (backfile to going forward).

"79% of CFOs believe that environmental, social and governance programs improve financial results by helping maintain a good corporate reputation or brand equity". (byMcKinsey Global Survey 2009)

- By being eco friendly, a company can maintain a positive corporate reputation.
- Stakeholders- from customers to business partners to investors are re-examing their personal environmental performance.
- Going paperless is a growing trend that stakeholders are viewing as a contribution to reducing their carbon footprint.

3. RISK MANAGEMENT: Don't stay in denial!! Paper documents expose significant business risks.

- Natural disasters and acts of terrorism can destroy critical company and customer documents disrupting the flow of business.
- Paper documents are difficult to protect from unauthorized viewers.
- Companies that issue paper checks are more vulnerable than ever to fraud
- Losing trust with a lost document: Lost documents may impact customer and vendor supply chains if your company has to inform stakeholders they can no longer access their business information.
- Documentation that are lost or misfiled (healthcare history, litigation, proof of ownership and intellectual property, tax filings, birth records, etc)....the penalties are huge.
- Documents that were misfiled or lost prior to scanning will obviously not be found, but once captured, there is never a need for physical removal.
- Once information is electronically stored, a company can store access files for years eliminating the risk factors utilizing paper.

4. DIGITAL RECORDS MANDATE: The easiest justification is where digital records are expected, mandated or paper volume is so huge that there are literally no alternatives.

- Industry and Stake-holder Expectations "the silent mandate"
*Just about every industry now has an expectation that companies have information available via electronic format; therefore there is almost no excuse justifiable to a Stakeholder not to have documents converted to digital.
- Government Regulations: For healthcare providers, meeting the "meaningful use" objectives under the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act of 2009 is an unavoidable mandate but there are incentives.
*Eligible health care professionals and hospitals can qualify for Medicare and Medicaid incentive payments (bonus payments) when they adopt certified EHR technology and use it to achieve specified "meaningful use" objectives. (US Dept. of Health and Human Services)

5. CUSTOMER SERVICE: The bottom line, customers want an immediate response!! Having your information converted to digital conveys the perception that your customer service is efficient and responsive.

- Immediate responses to inquiries differentiates companies with the best customer service, but there are direct costs in the time needed to search for paper documents, re-file them, return telephone calls, write letters or e-mails, copy or fax information.
- If supervisors or managers have to become involved because of delayed responses or lost data, their time equals additional operating costs.

6. PERSONNEL EFFICIENCY: Utilizing personnel time wisely

- Reassignment of experienced personnel to more productive functions is a typical benefit of document imaging.
- Increasing productivity of the employees

Should you convert records internally? The biggest question for many companies, Should the work be done in-house? Depending upon the need...If a small project is under consideration, doing it in-house is understandable. However, for projects that are medium to very large conversion project, the following issues need to be considered:
- Cost of durable high speed equipment and maintenance.
- Cost of a Project Manager, Staffing and Training.
- Cost of Turnover and Re-training - It's going to happen!
- Deadlines - How soon are the images to reside in the system?
- Detailed Requirements - If granular indexing requirements are necessary for business purposes, the time and skills to do it are best done by outsourcing.
- For large projects, often it costs less to hire experts and get rid of the headache.
- Quality results - Refined processes are established and already in place by an experienced and proven conversion company
- Does converting files fit with your core competency?

It takes more than scanners to go "paperless. In addition to proper technology, most large projects require ongoing project management and a diligent skilled staff. These are important issues to address prior to starting a conversion project. Frequently projects fail due to lack of understanding of the full dynamics of a document conversion project, therefore many projects must be re-started which costs even more money.

MAKING THE DECISION: What to do next? The Impact of Document Conversion on Your Companies Return on Investment is very relevant and needs to be studied.
- Evaluate the amount of physical records and frequency of handling by staff.
- Appraise the amount of all costs involved.
- Understand all document retention requirements for your business.
- Would your business operate more efficiently with electronic records?

"By 2013, 50% of all Global 2000 companies will implement enterprise wide records management solutions. By 2013, records management will be pervasive and will extend beyond existing content repositories into file stores, archive repositories and business applications. By 2013, discovery support will be a core capability for records management solutions". (by Gardner Group 2010)

If your company needs help deciding whether document conversion makes sense, and want to make sure you are including all of the necessary requirements, contact FNTI- Fidelity National Technology Imaging, we are experts in physical records conversion.

Let us help assess your requirements and situation!

FNTI (Fidelity National Technology Imaging) is a subsidiary of Fidelity National Financial and our only focus is full-service document conversion of mid to very large archived and ongoing projects across the United States. Our reputation is highly respected having completed some 1700 projects for Government and Commercial Clients. Established in 1979, FNTI has scanning centers around the U.S. Most of these centers not only provide scanning services of paper, film and fiche but also have secured automated box storage retention for physical record. FNTI is capable of converting in excess of 50 million images per month. To date, FNTI has successfully scanned and indexed over 2 billion physical documents that often required many complex functions. Over the last 10 years, FNTI has successfully been involved in nearly 100 large onsite conversion projects. For further information, visit our website at http://www.fnti-imaging.com.