How to disaster-proof your business documents

Businesses hold on to thousands of pieces of paper and manual documents. And as time goes on, these accumulate until there’s multiple filing cabinets overflowing with neglected, but important, files that rarely see the light of day. Easily destroyed, thrown away or lost, these documents not only take up valuable room and cost companies thousands in time spent looking for them, but they are also at very serious risk of the elements.

Earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes and floods are all common. Even in the UK, we are prone to floods, and have even been known to have the odd earthquake. With the weather getting wilder, making sure that important documents are safe and secure cannot be underestimated. So how can you ensure your important, and confidential business documents are kept safe, should disaster strike?

Document management with Cloud

The only sure fire way to keep your documents safe is by turning to digital practices. Some businesses decide to store documents away from offices and disaster-prone areas, such as at external storage facilities. However even if you decide to go down that route, you can’t guarantee that these will be kept safe from catastrophe such as fire or flood. Digitising your paper archive and current documents using a specialist scanner however will remove the need for storage facilities by enabling them to be stored on widely accessible cloud.

It is always worth backing these documents though as a secondary precaution. Although clouds are secure, if their server goes down, it will stop access which can hinder a businesses’ productivity for a time. Using a central server that is either located on or off site however will provide businesses with a secondary platform to access and store data and provide peace of mind. These are great for both large and small businesses as they are cost-effective to maintain, but there is always the risk that they can be damaged from outside elements. In order to combat this, some service providers store data on multiple servers housed at different geographic locations. So even if one of the servers is destroyed, your documents will still be safe as they are stored on other servers too.

The main benefit of backing up your documents digitally is that when you’re back in business, you can quickly recover your documents and resume operations which minimise disruption to both customers and employees.

Looking to disaster proof offices in London? Find out more about document scanning from Pearl Scan.