Document Scanning -to Outsource Or Not To Outsource?
This topic raises its head virtually every day at our headquarters
. Customers will often wrestle with the economics of whether to hire or buy a scanner and factor in their own labour costs for an in-house solution before requesting a price for bureau scanning from us, not a decision that can be taken lightly.
Clearly where your own internal labour resource is not an issue it will in most cases be more cost effective to do it yourself. However it's not quite as simple as that as you also have to take into account the complexity of the scanning job i.e.:
*Does it require indexing or complex preparation?
*Are the paper sizes compatible with a document feeder or will you have to flatbed scan which can increase the labour intensity ten fold?
*What do you do with the originals - archive again or destroy?
*How long do you legally have to keep documents before destroying?
Any professional document management company should be able to answer all of these questions for you and indeed most are already answered on our website. So with an ever moving target comprising many variables is it possible to easily calculate the benefits of in-house scanning vs outsourcing? The short answer here is probably not, unless you have a penchant for spreadsheets and a keen understanding of document management in its many guises. However, the following will help you make some basic assumptions in your analysis.
ESTIMATED COST FOR OUTSOURCING DOCUMENT SCANNING
For a quick ball park guide we will assume that the majority of your archive comprises A4 documents, not stapled or clipped in anyway and therefore ready to scan. The price per sheet for bureau scanning (where a bureau scanning company do the work for you) will be in the region of 4.2 - 5.5p per scan, dependant on quantity or put another way, an average a four drawer filing cabinet can be scanned for circa 375. This includes collection, secure storage whilst awaiting scanning, subsequent scanning, digital transfer (normally to disc) and final destruction of originals if appropriate (some documents you CANNOT legally destroy such as Wills or EPA's).
The obvious benefits here are that the final product/service is being carried out by experienced professionals and operator error or loss of documents have been factored out. Your resource has not been tied up for chunky periods of salaried time when they could have been producing revenue elsewhere in your business.
ESTIMATED COST FOR IN-HOUSE DOCUMENT SCANNING
This one is far more tricky and hinges quite heavily on whether, as previously mentioned, you have the resource, scanning hardware with the capability to handle the type and volume of documentation, associated software plus relevant knowledge to guarantee a satisfactory result.
Generally speaking if you combine archive scanning along with your day-to day scanning of current documents an in-house facility will in the long run prove to be the better option. A starting point for a document management/scanning system could be as little as one small scanner and some basic training, say 1000 or so. This will cope with the average demands of a small business. Companies with heavy paper usage will require more sophisticated solutions and these can run into several thousand pounds as a total investment with added costs for support and training.
SUMMARY
Taking all of the above into account its really a personal choice based around need vs available labour vs cost. If an electronic document management solution with all of its space and time saving benefits is part of your company's strategic forward thinking then an in-house solution will probably make more sense.
One off demands for reduction in archive filing for example will probably be more suited to outsourcing. All companies will produce written quotations free of charge and our suggestion would be to get them to do exactly that and do the maths for you. The really good news is that document management really is within the grasp of even the smallest company and once you experience the facility to file and reference all of your documents without leaving your work station you will never want to return to the century old and time consuming tradition of treking off to the filing cabinets ever again!
by: geoff shilton
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