Here are some important tips and tricks to make your document scanning process fast and efficient.

1. Tips for Fast & Efficient
Document Scanning
Here are some important tips and
tricks to make your document
scanning process fast and efficient.
Managed Outsource Solutions
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2. www.managedoutsource.com (800) 670 2809
In the present digital world, document scanning has become an important process for
every organization. As business organizations grow, the volume of paperwork and files
produced each day also increases. Managing these records can be a challenging task due
to storage space limitation. What is more important is that these documents must be
made readily available whenever and wherever needed. Digitization that starts with
document scanning services and conversion is an important step towards streamlining
documentation and freeing up valuable office space. Going paperless and digitizing
documents helps organizations save time and effort, and improve efficiency.
Digitization of documents facilitates small businesses to access vital business data using
advanced technological devices such as laptops, smartphones and tablets and prevents
loss of important data as well. Document scanning is an important requirement for
efficient document organization and management. Outsourcing the digitization process
to a reliable and reputable document scanning company enables to capture, manage,
store, and deliver important information and organize data in a systematic manner. In
addition, other prominent benefits of digitization include -
• Allows automation of manual processes
• Provides better access to information
• Provides measurable and tangible productivity improvements
• Saves time and helps improve customer service
• More office space
• Secure document storage
Here are some important tips to keep in mind before initiating the document scanning
process –
✓ Understand what you are scanning – Before beginning the scanning process, it
is important to decide which documents to convert into digital format and where
to store them. Generally, frequently-accessed documents benefit the most from
being converted into digital format as they can be easily and quickly shared at
the click of a mouse. Once they are digitized, it is important to store these files in
a safe place. Consider investing in an online document management or
enterprise content management (ECM) application to ensure seamless access to
your files. On the other hand, if you are scanning your records for disaster
recovery purposes, make sure you have portable media such as hard drives or
DVDs with enough disk space to hold your digital files.
✓ Sort, organize and prepare documents - Sorting, organizing and preparing
documents before scanning is essential for a successful scanning process. Since
business organizations have huge volumes of documents that are difficult to
handle, it is important to name and save every document accordingly. Saving
documents as PDF files is an ideal way, which allows searching using keywords.
Torn and dog-eared pages should be straightened and repaired. Remove staples,
paper clips and sticky notes from files.

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✓ Select the right file format – To access your scanned documents, choose a
specific file format that is compatible with your document management or ECM
system. Scanned documents can be converted into various file formats such as
PDF, GIF, TIFF, JPG and PNG. Portable document format (PDF) is the most widely
used and compatible file format that can be easily viewed and edited across a
wide range of platforms. On the other hand, if your PDFs need to be searchable
by keywords or phrases, optical character recognition (OCR) must be performed
during scanning. Before starting the scanning process, it is important to verify
file format requirements and confirm conversion at key points.
✓ Store multiple copies of files – Maintain multiple copies of scanned files and
store them in different locations. Apart from keeping these documents in a
central database or hard drive, copies can also be stored in the cloud. This is
advantageous because if one system malfunctions, the files can still be accessed
from other systems.
✓ Check for accuracy and quality – Verify that the captured information is
converted accurately. Make sure that every image is properly indexed, has the
correct resolution and is fully readable.
✓ Select the right resolution – Always check to see what DPI (dots per inch) is
being used as this will affect the resolution. Setting higher DPI will result in
larger file size. For black and white documents, the lowest acceptable resolution
is 200 dots per inch (DPI). The regular scanning resolution is 300 DPI and for
important documents with fine print, 600 DPI is possibly good.
✓ Use State-of-the-art Scanners – Purchase flat-bed or document fed scanners
according to your requirement and preferences. Document-fed scanners can
scan many pages at a time, whereas Flatbed scanners scan one page, one side at a
time. When a whole stack of paper documents are fed into the scanner, it scans
one page, one side at a time.
✓ Standardize naming convention – A descriptive and properly named file
allows users to learn more about the document content without having to open
the same. The naming convention should –
• Provide better access and retrieval of electronic documents
• Recognize the content of a document from a list
• Allow sorting of documents in a logical sequence (for instance – version,
date)
• Help keep track of versions of documents
While evaluating the document scanning process, it is important to analyze both short-
term and long-term needs of your business. Take adequate time to study your
documents and understand how they will fit into the specific business cycle.