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Thousands of businesses in the UK face an uncertain future as their finances are to be upturned by rising business rates, but none more so than those operating in the UK’s capital city. Although the results of the recent revaluation were announced last October, they won’t come into effect until next April but even now businesses in London must prepare to pay, what is estimated at, an extra £4billion in extra tax the next five years. Pearl Scan, a London based document scanning company, gives advice to these central businesses, offering a solution for companies looking for new ways to save costs.

We help keep down the costs for businesses in London with document scanning

While ‘document scanning’ and ‘paperless office’ may seem like buzzwords to many professionals, making the move to paperless and embracing the technological evolution within the world of work could bring with it a wide range of benefits, saving money in both direct and indirect means. Pearl Scan offers document scanning in central London and throughout the capital city, helping hundreds of clients to keep costs down using the innovative method, softening the blow of the imminent rising business rates.

Naveed Ashraf, Managing Director at Pearl Scan says “Some businesses are resorting to measures such as raising their prices for their customers to cope with the hike in tax but there are other, simple ways to keep costs down to cope with the recent revaluation. Implementing document scanning can save money by reducing the need to pay for file storage facilities and resources such as paper and ink on a regular basis. What’s more, productivity is greatly improved and margin for expensive errors such as misplacing or damaging important documents is removed, bringing further financial gain.”

You can read more on how to disaster proof your business here.

Pearl Scan has been revolutionising offices with its renowned document scanning service since 2003, becoming an industry leader in this increasingly relevant field. With expert staff and the latest equipment and technology, it has the capabilities to cope with digitisation projects from a wide range of sectors. Everything from invoices to microfiche can be scanned by Pearl Scan, presented to its clients in a digital format via a text searchable, cloud based image hosting platform.

Offering competitive rates and a variety of packages to suit all sizes and requirements, a tailored document scanning service is a worthwhile investment for any London based business during these uncertain times.

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.

A survey carried out by YouGov recently found that the UK’s small and medium-sized enterprises could be throwing away as much as £42.2m every single day in revenues looking for paper documents. 82% of financial services are still printing documents just to get a signature, and 31% of respondents also said that if they weren’t looking for documents, they would be spending time on business development.

This overreliance on paper – an outdated method of communication by any standard – could be costing the UK’s SMEs big. Switching to paperless solutions might not simply be a great option to protect the environment – it could end up protecting businesses in the long-term. Here are just a few ways digitising documents could end up supporting and protecting a small business:

Time savings

In the world of business, time is money. Time spent searching for archived documents or files in storage is time that could have been used more productively for business development, as mentioned above. A study in Australia found that workers can spend as many as five hours per week looking for documents, with three and a half hours also dedicated to filing and organising – if we assume these stats are replicated in the UK, that’s a lot of valuable time that could be used to support and grow the business in other ways.

Security reasons

What’s more secure – a filing cabinet or a cloud server? A physical archive or a password-protected hard drive? The answer these days is almost always the digital solution. Physical files can be lost, stolen or damaged in fire or flood. Going paperless means these documents are protected more robustly, with excellent security solutions that are more reliable and permanent.

Audit trails

Many businesses have to adhere to very string compliance policies with regards to document management and storage. Digital document management systems can simplify this process, with every document having a unique number and creating its own audit trail that can be followed with ease. Paperless documents can also be duplicated and amended while still keeping the original, which is another bonus when it comes to audits and compliance.

Accessible archives

Digital archives are far more accessible and user-friendly than physical ones. Sorting files by name, date or size can be accomplished with just a few clicks or taps, and managers can also password-protect confidential or restricted files, so that only authorised users can access them. Going paperless is also ideal when staff at different sites need to access the same documents – rather than the lengthy and expensive duplication of physical files, digital documents can be brought up from any location if they’re stored within the cloud, for total ease of use across multiple sites.