The considerable benefits of ditching the filing box and going digital are highly appealing, the workload involved is not. Filing a single folder’s worth of paperwork is a chore; an entire filing cabinet is a burden and an office full of them can feel like the sort of challenge that Greek myths are made of, except with confusingly-labelled invoices instead of unexpected animal heads.
The key thing to keep in mind is that for archives in particular, you don’t need to do the equivalent of transcribing every document. Simply converting it to a PDFwith a sensible filename and set of tags is all you need to file it away safely, securely and indefinitely. That can be done in just a few minutes, and then you can rely on a document management system (DMS) to maintain your archive thereafter. (if you’re new to this, check out our guide on what is a document management system).
Moving from dusty, steadily overcrowded shelf and filing space to unlimited cloud storage means your archive becomes far easier to navigate when you’re looking for information, and you don’t have to worry about losing files to mis-filing or physical damage - there’s a permanent offsite record, and should anything go astray you can simply restore your backup from the cloud.
It’s a process that’s delivered huge benefits for Workiro partners like financial advisers and accountants - their stories show that picking the right DMS for your business can deliver huge benefits for your staff and customers. It can be a daunting prospect to start with, if you’ve got a lot of history to get through, but at heart it’s a simple process:
- Confirm the compliance obligations for your business
- Choose the right platform to organise it all
- Set the right metadata
- Purge surplus files before you start
- Choose in-house or external
- Securely dispose of paper records afterwards
This guide will take you through the process in more detail, and list some of the pitfalls you need to look out for.
1. Confirm the compliance obligations for your business
Not all documents are suitable for electronic storage. In some cases, there are specific legal implications to not having a hard copy of a document, including wills and records of trusts. Such documents invariably require secure, disaster-proof storage that is better off being outsourced in any case, but you should find out exactly what your obligations are before you kick off a digitisation process.
You should get expert legal advice on the requirements for your business or sector, as requirements vary across different industries. In some cases, you may need to follow particular processes to certify the accuracy and authenticity of scanned documents. This is covered by compliance with BS10008, and if you’re compelled to comply with it, then you’ll likely need to retain the services of a professional digitisation service (see point 4 below).
2. Choose the right platform to organise it all
The move from paper to digital is such a big improvement that even basic free cloud storage is an improvement over paper records. But simple online storage is just the beginning: switching to a proper document management system with robust archive support gives you additional features that are capable of far more. Make sure you pick a platform that includes these features:
- Advanced search and organisational tools so you can quickly find documents
- Unlimited storage space so you don’t run into unexpected archive costs
- Robust user access control, so you can grant secure access to users or groups which complies with your retention and data privacy policy
- Compliance with highest standards for security and confidentiality, including ISO27001, CSA STAR and GDPR
3. Set the right metadata
When moving your archives from paper to digital, it’s absolutely critical that you get your filing system perfect. If you don’t, you’ll inadvertently create an extra layer of obfuscation that could haunt the organisation forever. Start by defining the key metadata each record needs to capture - reliable staples are things like client name, invoice number, date or project ID. Ensure that each record has the correct entries for each as it’s added to your digital archive.
In addition to this, many digitisation tools will include optical character recognition (OCR) which will automatically scan files and recognise text which can be saved as an editable document. Many desktop scanners include this as a feature, and it’s integrated into Adobe Acrobat and other PDF editing tools (you can use it on the Adobe website to scan individual documents). This can be a huge timesaver - but the text recognition is not always perfect, so you need your metadata to be bomb-proof because it’ll be your filing system of last resort.
As part of going from paper to cloud, you can take the opportunity to leverage the benefits of the new document management system: you can abandon folders as the chief organisational principle, and group files by something more useful like project, or client. It makes it much easier to see at a glance what’s going on.
4. Get rid of anything you don’t need to keep
Converting paper files to digital is a good opportunity to confirm how extensive your archive needs to be, and make sure you aren’t hitting the maximum limits of records retention legislation. Keeping customer data without good reason is a violation of GDPR, and there are some other document types, like case files, that should not be retained long-term. Your obligations will vary depending on your business - you can find out more in our guide to how long you need to retain business documents.
Even if there’s no legal limit, purging the archives is valuable for its own sake: even if you have unlimited cloud storage for business documents, it’s best to approach with a Marie Kondo mindset. If a file sparks neither joy nor any meaningful business insight, take the opportunity to ditch it and get a more efficient filing system. You’ll have less administrative overhead and less risk of accidentally storing something that may end up being a problem later.
5. Choose between in-house or outsourced
A simple choice, with a familiar set of advantages and disadvantages on each side. The former is almost certainly cheaper, but comes with risks. Going from paper documents to cloud storage is a big job, and inexpert handling will lead to errors. Don’t treat it as an edge-of-desk, part-time project: it’s a major transformation that needs a clear plan and appropriate staffing (and high-quality scanners to do the work.)
Using a professional digitisation firm will cost more, but you get less risk and usually a faster service, with contractually-committed quality control. Depending on the size of your business and the size of your archive, it may prove more cost-effective than grinding through the archive with your existing team, and you can be confident you’re getting expert-level service. Outsourcing is also all but essential if you need BS 10008 compliance (see point 1, above).
In the vast majority of cases, it’s worth paying the money and having an external service handle the process for you. There’s no shortage of options, and if you pick the right one it’s a one-off hit that means you can head into your new paper-free future without spending months project-managing the transition.
6. Use the right format for storage and collaboration
Planning your move from print to digital document storage needs to include deciding on the format you’re saving the files as. For storing text documents, the industry standard is scanning at 300dpi (dots per inch) and using the PDF file format, a combination which gives you excellent image quality and compatibility with just about every device and storage platform.
It enables easy collaboration on the stored files, too. Using Workiro as your document management system means you can easily share and annotate PDFs with both internal and external users, giving you the benefits of digital backup while adding new efficiencies that simply aren’t possible when passing paper documents around.
7. If you’re ditching the paper files afterwards, use secure destruction
To end where we began, be sure of your compliance needs before you torch the paper archive. Some documents you will need to retain hard copies of, so make sure you don’t bin anything you may later come to rely upon in court. You should also make sure the act of disposal doesn’t increase your chances of being summoned there: confidential information must be securely destroyed.
Depending on the volume of paperwork you’ve got to get through, you might need to get a contractor in for this job too - unless you want your team to be hunched over a shredder or perhaps a brazier to weeks to come. If you’ve only got a modest backlog, a simple office shredder should do the job well enough.
If you’d like to learn more about how you can switch to a paperless office, you can check out our guide to document archiving and retention. To pick the brains of an expert, set up a call with one of our specialists. For general questions, drop us a line.
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