The Importance of Document Scanning Services

Document Management is the science of managing all kinds of documents including electronic documents. But the reality is that most documents begin life as paper documents and must be scanned into digital images before they can join the world of online document management.

There is only one opportunity to take the perfect picture of your document. Don't leave it to chance that an inexperienced scanner operator using inferior equipment will miss pages, fail to make each page optimally readable or incorrectly index the document so that it can never be located!

Document Scanning Services - Scanning your mission-critical documents is an important component to the PaperHost suite of services. And while we welcome documents you may have scanned yourself or produced electronically, we stand ready to complete the case for outsourcing by providing the absolute highest quality document scanning services and indexing services to be found anywhere - and you'll receive this high level of accuracy at competitive market rates.

We back up this promise with high quality equipment that utilizes the latest technologies for image enhancement and double-feed detection. Our production batch document scanning software controls input batches for quality control.

Document Types - PaperHost maintains document scanning equipment that can handle the full spectrum of document types. Our engineering scanners can handle up to E-Sized drawings; our color scanners can handle resolutions up to 600dpi. And our workhorse scanners for any other document types up to 11" x 17" can move well-prepared documents at a rate of 120 pages per minute while still maintaining high-quality images.

Document Indexing - We can automate indexing tasks to lower your total cost per page. This includes barcode reading, database linking and numerous other features that speed the task of encoding your documents for easy retrieval.

phSCAN - The same product we offer to our clients, we use ourselves. With phSCAN, we drive the very best high speed scanners and insure that the images are the best they can be. Of course, you are welcome to scan your own documents and upload them to PaperHost. To learn more, visit our product pages for phSCAN, phINDEX, phCONNECT and phUPLOAD. But for a complete outsourced solution, look to PaperHost for all of your scanning, indexing and hosting needs.

Document Transport - PaperHost offers our own bonded and secure document transport to ensure that the chain of ownership and responsibility is never compromised. But if you aren't in our service area (metro Atlanta), we can help guide you to a qualified scanning vendor in your area that can upload completed work to PaperHost as if we had scanned it ourselves. Again, we take care of the details so you can be up and running quickly.

Scanning Workflow - PaperHost will work with your records manager to establish a work flow of documents so that only a small percentage of your documents are checked out at a time. You can get quick turnaround on documents in our possession including rapid fax back or e-mail responses for documents that are in production but not yet available on the web site.

PDF Conversion - Many companies have standardized their digital document libraries around the Adobe standard of PDF files. This gives the documents portability without requiring the user to have the underlying tool that created the document. Since the PDF viewer is free, this is a good choice for many types of documents. In addition, the document can be sent through the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) process to extract searchable text. Thus, when you locate a document that is stored in the PDF format, you can further search within the document for a key word. PaperHost's full suite of document scanning services includes these conversions and we can even make your entire library searchable by key word(s) if you have elected to include OCR in your PDF files.

We understand there are two predominate reasons for preserving documents. One is that they are leaving, breathing documents which are part of your current flow of business. The other is that they are needed for legal purposes or for research retrieval on a very limited basis.

Destination PaperHost - For those documents that are accessed as part of your daily business activities, you will want to have scanned documents loaded on the PaperHost Web hosting service. You will still get copies of our completed document scanning and indexing work sent to you on CD or DVD media with free software for local retrieval. These disks contain your original documents in an completely open and non-proprietary format. The indexing data is contained in a Microsoft Access data table so that you can move images and data into any future document imaging system. At PaperHost, we never put our customers into a proprietary trap!

Destination Archival Only - Obviously, even PaperHost can't make a case for paying to host archival documents on the Web. That's why we offer back file conversions that are destined for CD or DVD media and sent to you directly. Included with each disk is a free Simple Records Archival System (S.R.A.S) application that allows you to search and retrieve information from your document archive from any Microsoft Windows PC.

Pricing - No two document scanning jobs are the same. Your cost per page will be based on the total volume, the amount of document preparation needed and your special requirements for indexing, optical character recognition, etc. PaperHost is competitive in our pricing in relation to the rest of the industry. But we stand above the rest when it comes to years of operator experience and quality of equipment. PaperHost welcomes projects of all sizes, but volumes that reach the quarter-million-page range and up garner the most aggressive pricing. We will provide you with a quote within one business day after receiving the project specifications.

Summary - Paper documents and records are an important asset to your organization. A digital conversion of those documents creates a permanent and secure archive that can never be lost or destroyed. Any number of authorized persons can access this document archive without putting the documents at risk. And all this can be accomplished at a lower cost per page over the lifecycle of the document. Let PaperHost help you with a calculation of your ROI to prove that our document scanning services beat paper storage alternatives for the long haul.