The worldwide document imaging market was worth $13 billion last year and by all indications is only set to grow, at least for the next five years, according to industry analysts.
Many organisations run into trouble with their document imaging solutions due to conflicting demands in the business. Compliance with new and emerging regulations is one driver behind the adoption of document imaging systems and how they work to eliminate risk, while other primary organisational drives are cost-cutting, efficiency improvement and productivity increases.
Imaging systems can help to cut costs in the storage and retrieval of large numbers of documents, although the reverse can quickly become true. With the continually decreasing costs of electronic storage media comes the temptation to store everything, and to replicate information to ensure it is available at the right time in the right place. As a result, despite the lower media costs, companies can quickly find that their document storage costs have escalated and efficiencies been eroded. That`s because physical costs are only one part of the equation and storing everything that is available simply because the space exists, runs contrary to storage best practice.
Current global legislation requires companies to keep information for lengthy periods, as long as 20 or 30 years in the case of certain documents and even longer in some industries such as life insurance. These businesses should adhere to basic principles if they are to garner the benefits of electronic document storage:
* Clearly identify what needs to be stored, for how long and in what format, and then identify what can be destroyed. Implement this policy rigorously and get rid of what you do not need, including all duplicates.
* Identify what is needed for immediate access and focus on getting productivity benefits out of that information.
* Move any other information, which is not required for active business processes, onto lower cost media as you may never need to retrieve it.
Companies looking to retain records for extended periods of time should be thinking about protecting their information and not simply storing it.
Paul Mullon, Marketing director, Metrofile
The benefits of electronic storage are generally short-term. The technologies used to store and retrieve documents today will not necessarily be the same as those used to perform the same task in 15 years, for example. Even information stored on magnetic disks, optical discs and tapes can suffer the same fate because hardware support for the reading device and the skills to operate it may well have become obsolete.
Companies looking to retain records for extended periods of time should be thinking about protecting their information and not simply storing it. With that mindset they will not find themselves unable to gain access to some of their most important information.
Companies with this approach must consider two low-tech long-term document storage options: paper and reference archive media, combining the benefits of document imaging technology with the trusted nature of microfilm.
Paper is the lowest tech and one of the lowest cost options available, yet it must still be stored in a suitable environment. Reference archive media uses a new principle in document management that involves writing documents or images to new-generation microfilm using the same technology as electronic document imaging systems use. Economies of scale are gained by using the same technology for two different operations.
Two of the main benefits are the quality improvement and the reduced time to create documents. In the past, special static cameras were used to create a document image, a time-consuming and error-prone process.
Another major benefit of using the same technology, and one of the reasons companies are deploying this process, is that the original paper document can be destroyed, with the microfilm document taking its place as the original. Because it is created on-site at the same time as the electronic document, using the same process and the same technologies, it complies with good corporate governance practices and it can easily be stored off-site as part of a disaster recovery plan.
This approach constitutes a long-term records retention process for those documents which need to be stored for a long period, such as those required in terms of the National Archives and Records Service of South Africa Act, including South African history documents, building plans, population information and anything that must be kept for a lengthy period.
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