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Companies and businesses are always looking for ways they can generate revenue with marketing campaigns and deals to attract new customers but there’s been one idea staring them in the face for a number of years now; document scanning.

What is Document Scanning?

Also known as document imaging, scanning is the digitisation of documents into the form of a digital image. The documents may be converted to PDF, TIFF, JPEG or a range of other formats and the digital image can then have software applied to make the text contained searchable. The switch to managing documents in this way can bring a great deal of benefits which I have spoken about in previous articles. One particular benefit which attracts a lot of businesses towards scanning services is the way it can generate revenue. This might sound like an impossible idea but it’s true. Let me explain...

How Can It Generate Revenue?

To make it understandable, I’m going to explain a situation that one of our clients were recently experiencing before they got in touch.

At the time, they were employing five members of staff to deal with the 2000+ proof of delivery (PODs) documents the company received on a daily basis. Each member of staff would manually deal with around 400 documents every day. Sometimes, in around 5% of the total documents completed, there would be a slight mistake which would mean that particular POD would need to be processed again and the client request dealt with by customer services then the corrected documents would be sent once again to their distribution department.

Assuming that each employee mis-processes around 20 of the 400 PODs per day (100 PODs overall), we can then calculate the money wasted correcting these mistakes. These 20 corrections would take around two hours for each employee to correct.

2 hours x 5 members of staff = 10 wasted hours.

If these staff are paid £10 per hour (as a round figure), those wasted hours equate to £100 per day. Of course that would be £500 per working week, adding up to a massive £26,000 annually!

So…

Were they to invest just £5000 in scanning services to digitise their PODs and remove the risk of human error in processing completely, they would STILL end up generating £21,000 extra revenue each year. By these savings, just 10 years of scanning and digital document management will make the company over £200,000 in revenue!

If you’re looking at that and thinking “my company could never generate that much revenue”, you’d be surprised. Even with a small company, switching to scanned and digitised documents can save time and space and, as a result, generate that revenue from the word go.

Document Scanning Services

Here at Pearl Scan we offer a bespoke yet affordable document scanning service which can help you on your way to generating more revenue straight away and for many years to come. We have worked with companies, organisations and individuals from a wide range of sectors including those who work with legal paperwork, healthcare records, HR files and education documents.

Along with our successful scanning service, we also offer some additional, optional extras such as OCR processing to make digital documents fully text searchable by their contents, document retrieval software to help you manage your digital documents efficiently, use of our cloud platform to secure documents online and secure shredding and disposal of your original documents. These services cost very little (and are sometimes even free) and can further aid the increase in revenue through efficiency boosts and space saving.

If you would like some more information about scanning documents with Pearl Scan or any of the additional extras, give us a call today. We can give you a free, no obligation quote for your scanning project and an estimation for how much money you might be wasting with your current processes.

Request a Quote   |   Contact Us    |    This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The Scan-do People^tm


For more information feel free to give us a call: 
Nationwide: 0845 22 55 923          London: 0207 183 1885
Manchester: 0161 832 7991         Birmingham: 0121 285 1900

According to recent reports, more paper than ever is being thrown away and 35% of companies are ordering more paper than they were five years ago. So what's the problem? What is stopping businesses taking paperless steps?

The paperless office. Yes, we do talk about it a lot but judging by these reports, it needs discussing a lot more to change people's misconceptions about adopting digital business processes. So, let's take a look at the most common excuses that have prevented companies going digital with their document management.

It's too expensive to go paperless

This is not the case. In fact, you may well be wasting money with your current system on document storage and file retrieval costs among others. If you don't have the infrastructure to handle the digitisation process yourself then the smart choice would be to outsource to document scanning services rather waste money on attempting it yourself. Plus, outsourcing usually costs a lot less than you realise for the services it brings.

I can't get rid of aLL of the paper in my office

This is a common misconception about the paperless office which shows that perhaps it should have been called something else. While achieving a completely paper free office can be achieved if you really set your mind to it, the paperless office concept is really just to encourage the use of LESS paper and adopting more efficient and environmentally friendly means of doing business. Now this idea is easily achievable!

I will need to train my staff again

In this increasingly digital age, we are all surrounded by digital products on a day to day basis whether that's mobile phones or computers so if you adopt the right document management software, it will be simple enough that it can be picked up by anyone with a basic knowledge of computers.

My documents will be less safe in digital form

Again, not true. This rumour is constantly fed by news of digital files being hacked and information leaked but if you use safe servers and file encrypted documents with passwords, your digital documents will be completely safe from the risks of loss, theft and damage that paper documents are increasingly susceptible to.

Paper is too important for my business

This opinion is definitely just a mind set. In the same way that we claim we can't live without our mobile phones , it is simply a case of adapting to change. Where you would usually use paper documents to share important files with colleagues, you can just send a digital file over email. It can even be edited in real-time with apps such as Google Docs.

Going paperless won't change anything

There is such a broad range of benefits that come with going paperless that it's incredibly likely that it will bring at least one positive change to your company. You could;

• Save huge costs on storage
• Speed up file retrieval times
• Improve customer services
• Give your documents more security
• Increase office efficiency
• Boost green credentials
• Save/reclaim office space
• Boost employee morale

...the list goes on!

It's always been done this way, why change it?

What kind of attitude is that? If everyone thought that way, we would still have walking as the only mode of transport and be cooking dinner on bonfires! Progress is important to improve everyday life. Sometimes you might not even realise the positive effects a change can have until you make it. Just think about the evolution of the telephone to smartphone. All I can say is you'll never know unless you try and the benefits speak for themselves.

How Pearl Scan can help

Here at Pearl Scan, we offer a wide range of paperless office and document scanning services which can be tailored to suit the needs of each individual client. Our services can ensure the process from paper to paperless (or at least paper-light) is a smooth one with optional extras including OCR processing, cloud hosting and document retrieval software. If you would like some more information about the paperless office and how your company can benefit, check out some of our blog articles. For a free, no obligation quote for paperless office solutions, get in touch today.

The Daily Telegraph released an article announcing the 9 worst predictions in the history of technology. Being in the technology services industry, we found this article very interesting and amusing. What do you think?

As mere humans, we are arguably not that great at predicting the future. In Back to the Future, Marty McFly travels to the year 2015 giving the scriptwriters and director a chance to be creative with how they saw the future of the world 25 years on. This involved the prediction of flying cars, hoverboards and self drying clothes.

With a bit of artistic license, these can be forgiven but the predictions featured in the worst technology predictions articles were made by big names in the technology industry. Here's a few favourites among the spectacular gaffes...

IBM President Thomas Watson- "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." (1943)

Well...where do we start with this prediction? Is there anything that needs to be said?

Are you reading this on a computer? Yes? Have you had more than five computers in your life? Probably. The verdict: This prediction is pretty horrifyingly wrong, especially coming from someone at a company that recently brought in an annual revenue of $100bn selling computer hardware and software!

Founder of 3Com, Robert Metcalfe- "I predict the internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse." (1995)

This is another prediction that, in hindsight, is laughable. In 2011, there was an estimation of 2.1 billion internet users and this figure is guaranteed to have risen since. Far from collapsing, the internet has now become a vital lifeline for business, communication and information. It's even possible to store things online on cloud platforms such as important documents.

Founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates- "Two years from now, spam will be solved." (2004)

A quick look in my rarely checked spam folder last week revealed over 200 emails over a 30 day period. Sorry Mr Gates, but I think you were a bit far out with that prediction. Unless there's something he's not telling us...

Former writer for the New York Times, David Pogue- "Everyone's always asking me when Apple will come out with a cell phone. My answer is, 'Probably never." (2006)

If Pogue had just held on for one more year he might not have been forced to eat his words. Apple are now onto their 10th model of the iPhone and despite the death of CEO Steve Jobs, the market continues to boom.

How does this relate to Pearl Scan?

So as you can see, it's quite difficult to make a bold statement and predict the future when it comes to technology and often it's just not advised but we like to make a few bold statements of our own. Here at Pearl Scan, we see an increasingly digital world with less reliance on paper based resources and more digital file management. The benefits of going digital can be found in some of our other articles so in terms of progressive business, it's a no brainer.

If you would like some more information on the document scanning and digital document management solutions we offer, feel free to browse our website and blogs or get in touch for a free, no obligation quote.

Request a Quote   |   Contact Us    |    This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The Scan-do People^tm


For more information feel free to give us a call: 
Nationwide: 0845 22 55 923          London: 0207 183 1885
Manchester: 0161 832 7991         Birmingham: 0121 285 1900