Document Scanning
For a lot of businesses paper document storage is an ever growing problem and expense. Storing paper documents on site can be limited while external storage such as warehouses can be very expensive. Storing your documents externally is also very inefficient as document retrieval can quite often take days and be costly.
Document Scan offers an easy, affordable and efficient solution to this problem with our complete document scanning service. We take care of everything from document collection to secure document destruction.
The following shows our complete 11 stage process:
1. Personal collection of your documents
We personally collect all your documentation in our own vehicles using our own staff.
We never use the postal system or couriers to collect your paperwork.
2. Preparation of your documents
All bindings such as staples, paper clips, treasury tags and binders etc. are removed and creases are straightened out to ensure that the documentation can be fed through our scanners. Also depending on the clients requirements we will also perform additional tasks at this stage such as removing account slips from the main document and appending them at the end.
3. Scanning of your documents
The prepared documents are then scanned by our highly trained and skilled scanning operatives. We use top of the range scanning equipment which features a full range of intelligent settings and configurations that ensure no pieces of paper are missed during the scanning process.
4. Quality Control - Stage 1
Once an entire document has been scanned our highly trained scanning operatives will go back through the entire document inspecting all pages and making sure everything is as it should be, before it is then indexed and saved.
5. Indexing of documents
Once scanned and passed our first quality control stage, the electronic versions of your files are then indexed in the way you want them to be, using your specific naming convention. Such pieces of index data can and often include things like a storage number, file number, reference number, client number, client surname, client address or matter description etc. to name a few.
Indexing is a key element of electronic document storage and allows you to locate the required file within seconds.
6. Quality Control - Stage 2
Once the document has been saved and indexed by the scanning operative it then gets passed to our quality control team. They will go through the entire document again inspecting every single page with a different set of eyes and making sure everything is correct and accurately captured. We pride ourselves on the high quality error free documents we produce because in our business nothing but perfection is acceptable.
7. Final Processing
Once your document has passed our quality control procedure and has been indexed it then under goes our final processing stage. This stage of the process is mostly dependant on the clients’ specific requirements however common tasks that are performed here can include:
- Optimising the PDF file
- Transforming the PDF into a PDF/A format.
- Performing OCR on the file to produce a searchable PDF
- Encrypting or adding security restrictions to the PDF file
8. Quality Control - Stage 3
Once the final processing takes place a report is automatically generated which details if any errors or warnings were generated on any of the files during this process. Our quality control team will inspect this report and fix any problems that might have occurred during this final processing stage.
9. Files are stored to disk
Once everything is checked and approved the scanned files are stored to a fully encrypted USB stick. They can also be stored to an external hard drive depending on your requirements.
As an extra and optional service we can also provide a managed or non-managed document management service. With a managed service all of your files are automatically made available as they are scanned, providing you secure access to our Online Document Management System 24 hours a day. With the non-managed service you simply import all the documents from the encrypted USB stick provided.
10. Personal delivery of your electronic documents
Once we have completed the scanning we will return the electronic versions of your documents along with a confirmation sheet to you personally using our own staff. This confirmation sheet will detail every single document that is returned including the number of pages it contains.
11. Your documents are returned or securely destroyed
Once the electronic versions of your documents have been returned to yourself we will either arrange for your documents to be returned to your offices or we will arrange for the documents to be securely destroyed and recycled in accordance with European Information Destruction Standards BS-EN 15713:2009. If the documents are to be destroyed we will store the originals in our secure facility for a period of 8 weeks. This ensures extra piece of mind knowing that if there is ever a problem with a file and thus it needs to be rescanned or you simply require the original file back for whatever reason we will have it. However due to our rigorous quality control procedures we have never had to rescan a single document from the 6 million+ that we have scanned thus far!
When the destruction of the documents is complete we will issue you with a certificate of destruction. This provides you with a legal audit which adheres to the guidelines set out by the Financial Conduct Authority and Solicitors Regulation Authority.