Tips & Advice
ZyImage - Frequently Asked Questions
Consider these points – as a high volume scanning bureau we deal with these issues every day.
- Do you plan to scan all of your old documents or just the current everyday ones?
- Scanning your old documents requires considerable time and dedication. However, if you do not have them scanned, you still have the associated storage and manual retrieval costs.
- Where are all your documents stored at the moment?
- If you use an off-site storage location, it is possible that you will have to arrange transportation to get the documents to your scanning location. Typically, we find that 40-50 boxes will fill a small van, and unless you work with this number, it is difficult to maintain continuity of work.
- Do you have room for storage near the scanning area?
- You need to be able to keep prepared boxes of documents close to the scanning area to ensure that the scanner operator can access them easily. Because the speed of preparation can vary, it is worthwhile having as many boxes prepared in advance as possible.
- Do you have enough staff to undertake preparation work?
- Scanning large volumes of paperwork requires more than one member of staff. Generally, we have found that you need at least 2 preparers for each scanner operator.
- Do your staff have the dedication needed for continuity?
- Imagine removing staples for 8 hours per day. This is a tedious job and it can be difficult to keep your staff motivated.
- How many documents do you have to scan?
- Be prepared for your scanning project to take time. Many back office conversions can take months – even years.
- What size are your documents?
- If you have a mixture of A4 and A3 documents, you need to get an A3 capable scanner. This can also involve extra preparation work.
- Are your documents double or single sided?
- If you have just a few percent of double sided documents, it is worth scanning everything double sided and removing blank pages. You may find that you need extra hardware to do this automatically.
- What is the quality of your documents?
- Typically, invoices and older files require image clean-up due to their poor quality, and possibly faint content. This can require special hardware, and also experience on how to best set up the scanners to get the best image quality – it is too time consuming to check and adjust each page manually.
- Do I need to scan in colour?
- Colour documents take much longer to scan. They also require much more space on your system. It is better to only scan in colour if you really need to.
- What key fields do I need to attach?
- By attaching key fields, you are making searching for your documents easier. If you add too many, this process can make the scanning process considerably slower. Imagine if you had to type ten lines of text for every document you scan. Look at how you currently file your documents and choose the best key fields based on this, for example you could have a client name and a matter number.
- What do I do with my paper documents once they are scanned?
- If the purpose of your scanning project is to reduce storage costs, and to get rid of the bulky paper files you will need to have your documents securely disposed of. You may decide that you do not wish to do this immediately, in which case you need storage for the documents until they can be safely destroyed.
- How do I know where in the scanning process my documents are?
- You need to keep logs as to the contents of each box you deal with and where the box is. For example, is it being prepared or has it been prepared and is waiting for scanning? Has it been scanned, but not yet processed?
