Document Scanning

EDM has the capacity to scan very large volumes of archived documents, microfiche and microfilm at our state-of-the-art scanning facilities. Whether you’ve accumulated a large number of documents gradually as part of your day-to-day business activities, or very suddenly as the result of an acquisition or merger, the problems associated with high volume document storage are the same. It is difficult for users to locate and retrieve the information they need, particularly if it’s stored at a different location. This has an impact on customer service levels, because queries cannot be dealt with quickly, and makes it difficult for two or more people to view a document at the same time. It also means that documents are in danger of being mislaid, misfiled or damaged through handling. The physical storage required for paper files is costly – it can take up valuable office space or require external warehouse facilities. And for documents with substantial business value, insurance against loss due to fire, flood or theft may be required. For these reasons and many more, most organisations reach a point where they have to convert physical files to a safer, more accessible, more future-proof format. We have more than three decades’ scanning experience turning unwieldy analogue documents into internationally accepted digital formats, and thereby transforming the efficiency of our clients’ organisations.

 EDM Group offers a range of options for the scanning of documents, depending upon their current storage format and your retrieval requirements.

Archive scanning. Customers often ask EDM Group to scan their stored archives. The reasons for this are numerous: releasing office space occupied by files; protecting documents against damage or loss; improving document access in terms of speed or sharing; providing 3^rd party access for customers, business partners or auditors; or a need to integrate the data with other IT systems. Whatever the need, EDM Group can provide the full range of services including document cataloguing and boxing; secure document transfer to our storage facilities; document preparation and scanning into digital format; document categorisation, indexing and data capture; ongoing storage or secure document destruction. Throughout the scanning process, EDM offers an expedited scanning service for documents required urgently.

All of these elements of our service are accredited to ISO9001, ISO27001, and ISO14001. Our procedures also comply with BS 10008, the standard for legal admissibility and evidential weight.

For documents with low retrieval rates, scanning the whole archive may not be the best solution. In these circumstances EDM will provide a scan on demand service. Using an intuitive on-line request service, users simply request the file they need, and the urgency. EDM staff then retrieve the file from secure storage, prepare and scan it, and upload the file for viewing via the EDM Online hosted document store. It’s secure, efficient and highly cost-effective.

Where documents are newly created or received by the organisation, for example as inbound mail, EDM Group can digitise documents as a regular process. That may be as a Digital Mailroom, or simply as a regular job on a daily, weekly, monthly (or some other interval) basis, often known as day forward scanning.

All of the scanning services above can be deployed individually or in combination to achieve the best permutation to maximise efficiency and cost-effectiveness and minimise the use of hard copy documents in customers’ business processing, freeing them from the problems of document management and allowing them to focus on core activities.