If your business is similar to others, you’re probably always looking for ways to reduce costs while becoming more efficient. One easy way to do this is to digitize all of your paper documents.

Document scanning services give your business the opportunity to do this in an efficient manner, no matter what your reasons. Keep reading to learn six ways using a document scanning service can benefit your workplace.

1. Secure Data/Document Storage

Data protection and security is a vital issue for businesses to keep under consideration at all time. The goal is to protect documents from being stolen, damaged, or lost through flood, fire, or theft. A business can keep scanned images stored securely in an online document management system, which can be accessed at various user role levels. These documents are easily shared among users in various locations and offices.

Digital documents can be backed up on a regular basis, which allows your business to offer continuity. If you like to back up to hard drives, you can do this in addition to uploaded scanned documents. In the event of a fatal crash of the storage computer, your documents will not be lost, and your business will not suffer in the least when it comes to retrieval.

Scanned and stored documents are much more secure than hard copy information. You can encrypt, password-protect, and securely store scanned documents in the cloud. As mentioned above, you can assign different access levels to all users and also track file activity for further security.

2. Enhanced Information Preservation

When you have important historical documents and you want to preserve them for many years to come, document scanning will help. The aging process accelerates any time a paper document is handled, so digitizing these documents can help protect your important info from physical deterioration. At the same time, you get the added benefit of improving the legibility of old documents.

3. Improved Customer Service

Many businesses spend a lot of time looking through paperwork for customer info, which can affect customer service response times and even delay projects. Digital documents are easily searched using a keyword, which allows workers to easily find what they need. You can choose how you store and organize your scanned document, which means that it will be easy to find. The amount of time saved on searches over the course of a year will be considerable, and will increase your company’s efficiency.

4. Environmentally Conscientious

With an increasing number of businesses becoming more environmentally friendly, scanning your documents can help your business move towards becoming paperless. The change can seem quite drastic to go from relying on paperwork to being paperless, but in the end you will notice reduced business costs, ease and efficiency, and the transport of physical documents. All of these issues will dramatically decrease your business’ carbon footprint.

5. More Office Space

When you switch over to scanned documents, you will be amazed at the transformation of your office. The amount of paperwork and filing cabinets are just the tip of the iceberg. The amount of office space you will free up by going digital can be enormous; the information you can store on one DVD will replace almost 30 filing cabinets! The saved space will give you the opportunity to use it in new and more effective ways, from re-using the space to fit in more people and workspaces, to moving to a smaller office.

6. Compliance with Auditors

Compliance is a legal reality for most businesses. When you scan your documents, it makes it easier to fulfill your company’s regulatory and legal obligations. You can organize, index, and produce your digital files quickly and easily upon the demands of strict auditors.