The Real cost of Keeping Paper Records

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Storing paper documents for your business can seem simple at first,

but over time you will begin to see the overwhelming document

overload as well as a drop in your business productivity. According to

a Gartner study, one out of every 20 documents is lost or misplaced

and companies spend approximately 25 hours recreating those lost

documents. Think of all your team could accomplish with that extra

time —and the money you could save in labour costs.

Exactly what is the true cost of keeping your paper documents? And

how do you avoid it? These are questions that we hear a lot of from

our customers. Keep reading to see exactly why keeping your paper

documents can be incredibly costly for your business, and how

implementing document Scanning can greatly

reduce those costs.

Overall Cost

On average it costs about $4.82 to handle a single paper document

and It is estimated that US companies will waste about $8 billion every

year on managing paper. If you think about all the paper documents

you store within your business and need to retrieve on a daily basis,

those numbers start to add up fast. If you keep your documents stored

in an offsite storage facility, retrieval costs alone can be expensive.

What about when a file goes missing? How long would it take you to

find it? Having your team thumb through hundreds of documents just

to find one is not what you want your team to be putting their well paid

time and effort towards.

You need to also take into consideration the upkeep of storing paper

documents as well. According to a Gartner study, each four-drawer file

cabinet holds an average of 10-12,000 documents, takes up 9 square

feet of floor space and each one costs $1,500 per year. Also the

upkeep of printers and faxing machines come into play as well. All of

these expenses and time not only hurts the growth of your business,

but also puts you at risk of losing important documents.

Lost Documents

Think of how many times your business had misplaced a document, or

how many times you couldn’t find a document and had to replace it.

According to a Gartner study, approximately 25 hours to recreate each

lost document. This is time that could be used toward other, more

important business efforts. With 90% of a business's information

stored in documents, you don’t want to put all your trust into a filing

system that isn’t very efficient or reliable. What if there was a flood or

fire? According to a Gartner study, more than 70% of today’s

businesses would fail within three weeks if they suffered a

catastrophic loss of paper-based records due to fire or flood. You may

be thinking to yourself, “Well that won’t happen to my business!”

Unfortunately, that’s a risky way of thinking. You want to be proactive

and make sure that if something like that were to happen, your

documents are secure, safe, and easily accessible.

Retrieval Time

One main issue we see with our customers is the retrieval time of

paper documents. On average it takes around 10 minutes per paper

document to retrieve, copy and re-file. When working with paper

documents, no matter how organized your filing system is, you will run

into the problem of not being able to retrieve documents in a timely

manner. Say you need to find an invoice for a certain client and it’s not

in its normal filing cabinet? You have already spent time looking for it

and now you will have to track down this document which increases

your retrieval time and can upset your clients.

Security & Audits

Your business may keep certain paper documents due to legal

reasons and/or for possible audits. According to an AIIM research,

62% of businesses are strongly reliant on their file-shares. These

types of documents are extremely important and by storing them in a

filing cabinet or an off-site facility, you are making it more difficult for

your business to retrieve them in case of emergency. For example,

imagine your business is going through an audit and production must

halt until the audit is completed. If you and your co-workers are

spending hours going through each filing cabinet to find the exact

documents the auditor needs, you are keeping your business from

moving forward with production, thereby exponentially losing money.

Overall Efficiency

Each business is different when it comes to their document lifecycle.

You may have processes set in place for when a document is created

it moves from one department to the next. However, with paper

documents you would need to either hand it in person, fax it over to

the correct department, or scan and email it over with the other

department reprinting it. Especially with many people working from

home nowadays, these processes may not be the most efficient way

of moving your documents around.

As a business you want your processes to be streamlined and

customized to your business needs. By keeping paper documents,

you are holding back your businesses efficiency and could potentially

hurt your business in the long run. The International Data Corporation

found that a business with 1,000 employees wastes $2.5 million to

$3.5 million a year chasing documents. You may not see the problem

within your business right now, but over time if you keep storing paper

documents your business will run into at least one of these issues if

you are not proactive.

What Can Be Done?

So what exactly can be done to minimize your paper documents? The

best path to go down is to start your journey to become paperless with

a document management system (DMS) or Enterprise Content

Management system (ECM). With a DMS or ECM, you are able to:

- Build a secure and trusted repository of accessible documents

- Drastically reduce the cost of off-site paper document storage

and per-page retrieval costs with document scanning

- Address both internal and external auditor’s requests in a timely

manner

- Prevent fire, flood, or theft from putting your company out of

business

- Track and get approval on work as it traverses departments

- And more!

Over time you will be able to see the ROI on implementing a

document management system through reduced labor and physical

storage costs. Your business will become more efficient, save money,

and reduce the risk of losing documents.

Our document scanning solutions will assistyour business to

 grow without the hassle of storing paper documents.

Still have questions? Give us a call or contact us.