It is fairly widely understood that successfully deploying electronic document management systems requires properly applying functions like check-in and check-out, version control and rollback when creating and protecting documents. The documents must also be available in whatever formats are required to deliver them in their respective media whether they started out on paper, as email text, sound recordings or some other configuration.
What often gets overlooked, however, is the need to do all of this in a way that can accommodate the scope and needs of your organization — not only today but in the future, and as part of an overall content management program. Given the frequency with which companies buy one another these days, it is conceivable that yours might acquire another or be acquired at some point during your tenure. And when that happens, the document management systems in place right now — if any — likely will turn out to be insufficient, because it wasn’t implemented with the idea of scaling to embrace a larger entity in mind.
Read about the importance of document capture as a first step in effective document management systems
Get a definition of electronic document management
Learn about optimizing the capture process within a document management strategy
One of the reasons this is so — besides no one thinking about it — is that “scalability” can be defined in so many ways that the issue is easier to ignore. For a lot of people, the term means simply the ability to throw more servers and more memory at the system should the workload cause performance to sag. From a technology standpoint, this certainly is one important characteristic.
And though response time — to name one performance-related measure — is something business users are sensitive to, it is far from a primary business factor.
Business factors affecting scalability
From the perspective of addressing the business need, scalability is less about the materiel and more about the work being performed. The factors that relate to and are affected by that work are more essential to the business; they will expand and contract in step with changes in the business itself. Because they will affect the burden placed on the document management system, that system must be able to size itself to the load.
This line of logic seems straightforward enough, but it quickly gets complicated when it comes to defining how that load is best measured. Typically, there are three ways to approach this:
Each of these can and will likely change during the course of any document management product’s lifetime, and it can be a real problem when, say, the document or user volume grows beyond the system’s capacity to handle it. Finding one with some built-in flexibility and the proper mix of contexts will afford a fair measure of future-proofing, and the exercise of scoping your context and selecting the most effective system is at the center of the scalability question.
Steps along the road
Preparing for the scoping project should encompass a few core research initiatives and some basic calculations to identify and estimate the kind of scale an organization should be looking at. Here are some examples:
Properly conducted, these tasks will result in a fairly clear picture of what your document management scalability requirements should be. Ideally, you would perform this work before issuing your request for proposal (RFP) so you can ensure that the RFPs you receive will actually address the needs that you have.
Besides maximizing the odds that you will end up with a system you will be happy with, this latter point also speaks to one last often overlooked scoping success factor: The ability to identify, qualify and limit the number of products to pick from. Simple Google searches will return long lists of possible candidates, and it is enormously helpful to be able to narrow that list by separating the wheat from the chaff according to some tightly defined parameters.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Steve Weissman provides guidance and professional training on content, process and information management. Weissman is president of the AIIM New England Chapter and principal consultant at Holly Group. He can be reached at [email protected].
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by Mark Roy Long | Updated Aug. 5, 2022 – First published on May 18, 2022
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Consistency is a necessity when performing information technology (IT) tasks at your small business. Whether it’s installing a software patch or responding to a server failure, IT procedures must be well documented to produce desired outcomes.
IT runbooks are the best method to achieve this consistency. We’ll go over runbook basics, the differences between runbooks and playbooks, and how to create a runbook, so you can begin using this tool at your small business.
Each IT runbook documents an approved process, and IT system administrators and operators use runbooks, collected in catalogs, to ensure routines such as starting, supervising, debugging, and stopping a system are standardized.
With a runbook, whether a process is performed daily or once a year, an experienced employee and a new hire will complete it the same way.
Typical runbook catalogs address:
Runbooks are part of Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) protocols. The ITIL framework consists of best practices and checklists to integrate IT activities with overall business procedures and objectives.
Runbooks incorporate information from ITIL processes such as knowledge management and contribute to problem management.
Runbook automation (RBA) via IT management software allows you to create runbooks and perform them automatically, with human intervention occurring only at predetermined points.

This runbook combines automated tasks with human analysis. Image source: Author
A runbook catalog is like a cookbook: Each one is a collection of processes that includes lists of resources and procedures to produce predetermined outcomes, whether it’s monitoring system performance or cooking an omelet.
Runbooks are often confused with playbooks — some IT professionals use the terms synonymously — but there are significant differences. While runbooks define individual processes, playbooks deal with overarching responses to larger issues or events and may incorporate multiple runbooks and personnel within them.
The security incident response playbook below includes runbook documentation, but its workflow has a wider scope than the runbook alone.

This security incident playbook incorporates relevant runbook documentation within its workflow. Image source: Author
If a runbook catalog is comparable to a cookbook, a playbook is like a guide to hosting different social events: a cocktail party, a wedding reception, or a formal dinner.
Each event includes food items — hors d’oeuvres, a wedding cake, entrees, and desserts — but the recipes, instead of standing alone, are part of a larger workflow: creating a guest list, formulating a menu, choosing music, and more, to create a unified social experience.
Runbooks come in two categories: general procedures and specialized procedures for specific events, service requests, or assets. Both types of runbooks may be:
General runbooks include routine IT department activities such as a help agent responding to low-level IT tickets or a network administrator performing pre-scheduled tasks in your IT management software:
Documenting routine procedures makes new IT employee onboarding more efficient and promotes process consistency no matter who is performing tasks.
Specialized runbooks document processes for more complex service requests or unplanned events, such as different disaster recovery scenarios. A detailed runbook for each situation reduces downtime and produces optimal results.
Specialized runbook topics include:
The worst time to create a specialized runbook is in response to a critical event. Be proactive to avoid the loss of time and money.
As you work through the five steps below to create your runbooks, keep the five As in mind:
Careful planning is required to produce high-quality runbooks that provide the most help for day-to-day tasks and unexpected critical events.
Considerations include:
Each runbook must be comprehensive yet focused, and uniform content organization allows IT personnel to access information without delay.
Gather the necessary information for your runbook before you begin writing to streamline the writing process.
Information to generate includes:
A runbook template aids the research process because you’ll know up front what you need. You also avoid a start-and-stop writing process due to repeatedly backtracking to find yet another piece of critical information.
Documenting procedures may not be anyone’s idea of a good time, but completing the previous two steps will make the process more efficient when you’re ready to write.
Two helpful hints include:
Another way to achieve clarity is to pair a technical writer with an IT subject matter expert (SME) instead of using only IT personnel to produce runbooks.
Everyone wants their first draft of a document to be the final version. Instead, conduct rigorous testing of completed runbooks to identify missing, incorrect, extraneous, or unclear content.
Two groups to use for testing are:
Collect feedback from those outside the runbook’s operator procedures, such as upper-level supervisors and others who participate in authorization or communication processes.
Change is a constant inside IT departments and systems, so periodically evaluate and update your runbooks to maintain their applicability.
Two times to do this include:
Store your runbook documentation in a centralized repository for easy updating and so everyone uses the same versions.
Runbooks ensure consistent, high-quality IT service delivery, whether it’s a routine help desk ticket or an unexpected system failure. Producing runbooks is also a proactive strategy to minimize the loss of time and money due to critical events.
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Mark Roy Long is a technology journalist and workflow expert writing for The Ascent and The Motley Fool.
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Keeping on top of critical documents and managing business data are some of the most important things your company can do. If you have installed a document management system, we’ve got some tips to help you run it effectively.
Implementing a document management system (DMS) is a great first step to keeping your business documents organized. However, you’ll need to adhere to some document management best practices to maintain effective document management, and we’ll show you how.
The good news is that many of the leading document management software solutions make it easy to keep track of your documents and ensure your business is compliant with local legislation. That doesn’t mean there’s no effort on your part, and below are the top document management best practices to help you get started.
Document management system best practices include accurate indexing and filing of electronic documents, creating a document access hierarchy and carrying our regular audits.
The best business document management system is the one that’s easy to use and full of features to make your life easier. Such features include automations, file versioning, collaboration options and robust security for your files.
Some of the document management best practices featured below may seem obvious. Thankfully, that means they’re easy to understand and implement; you need only ensure you remain consistent with them to have a continuously robust document management system in place. Let’s go through them.
The first step your business needs to take is identifying which document management system is right for you. While many of the options are similar, they’re not the same, and choosing one that doesn’t meet your needs can be a waste of time and money.
If your business creates a lot of new documents that you need to collaborate on, then something like Microsoft SharePoint or Egnyte are good options, as both offer Office 365 integration. Alternatively, if you simply need a space to store and manage contracts, DocuWare is a terrific option that also allows you to digitally sign your documents.
To ensure your documents are easily accessible, it’s vital that you index each new document and folder accurately, thus creating a consistent file structure. Prior to creating your DMS, we recommend that you make clear folder structures and create a list of categories for each document type. 
Clear indexing makes it much easier to find documents when searching, and far easier for different departments to manage documents within their section of the business. When using a document management solution like M-Files, you can also label documents with tags and other forms of metadata, ensuring each document is in its proper place within your DMS.
If you’re migrating from physical documents to electronic documents, it’s good practice to make digital copies of your paper documents. It may be a daunting task, but scanning documents and transferring them to an electronic digital management system ensures that sensitive documents remain safe and accessible.
Paper documents are much easier to lose, and a physical filing cabinet doesn’t have the same level of security that the best document management software provides. So moving everything over not only makes filing more efficient, it also gives far more robust protection for each document.
Not every person in your business needs to have access to every document that lives in your document management system. There will be sensitive documents — like employee contracts and performance records — that must remain confidential. Thankfully, with today’s document management software you can grant access permissions to users of your choice.
When setting up your document management system, take time to identify which senior members of staff and departments need to access specific documents. They’ll also be able to control access for their own team members, and choose which of them can access, edit and share documents.
Automations are something every business should add to their document management workflow. They make business life easier and also help you remain consistent in managing your documents and business processes.
Depending on the document management software you’re using, you can send automated notifications when a document is created or edited. You can also set automated document approval workflows for certain documents, as well as set up automated invoicing if your business works with external clients. 
If you’re using an efficient document management system, you can expect to have more automation options available, and it’s a good idea to make use of them.
Assuming you want to move away from physical documents and filing cabinets, you have two options when it comes to using a document management system: on-premise and cloud storage. 
On-premise document management software allows you to control your documents from a server within your business. Cloud storage means your documents exist on third-party servers — which some users don’t like.
However, cloud storage gives you an added layer of protection should your hardware get damaged or stolen, as you’re still able to access your documents in the cloud. Cloud-based software also makes it much easier to collaborate with different users, especially within remote teams, improving overall business efficiency. 
If you’re looking for a space to manage documents as well as other file types, check out our top online cloud storage providers for documents.
If your business constantly updates documents, having effective version control in place is a must. File versioning means you can access previous versions of documents, and restore them if needed. 
It also lets you give some users only the ability to view documents and other users the ability to view, comment and change the edited versions. Doing this means you can effectively collaborate on a document and ensure a document isn’t changed without the proper authorization.
Although it’s much easier to manage business documents with an electronic document management system, it’s still good practice to do regular audits of your documents to mitigate against potential process failures or breaches. 
You can do audits internally and externally. For the former, it’s good to do audits every three to six months, while an external audit can be conducted annually.
Not only does auditing allow you to learn what documents you have in place, it also means you can understand if your business is being compliant with sector regulations. Many professional sectors will enforce an external audit, so it’s good to keep on top of everything, rather than panic when the time comes for your business to be put under the microscope. 
It’s a good idea to learn what types of documents you need to keep in the document management system for a certain period of time. For example, in the financial industry, regulatory requirements state that certain documents must remain on record for a period of seven years. Before deleting a document, double-check to see if it’s against regulations to do so.
Sticking to these document management best practices will help you keep your document management system in the best shape possible. If you have signed up for a new document management system, it’s best to put the above tips in place as soon as possible, to ensure you can keep on top of your documents and business processes.
While all the above tips are important, we suggest you prioritize folder and file structure, version control and selective user permissions, as these are the core of efficient document management. 
It’s also worth trying out different document management solutions before committing to one long term. This way your business can identify which solution is best for its needs and provides the best user experience, which is important considering you’ll likely be using it every (working) day.
While still at it, read our document management vs content management guide to understand which product better suits your needs.
What do you think the best practices are for efficient document management? Is there a business document management system you recommend? Which software do you currently use for managing documents? Let us know in the comments. Thanks for reading.

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Developing applications using open source components provides the architectural building blocks to accelerate digital transformation. But as it matures in the enterprise, IT leaders need to grasp the mindset shift that goes beyond the “open source is free” mantra and recognise the role it plays in modern enterprise architectures and the enterprise support and service-level agreements, which are very different from traditional commercial software contracts. This difference can jar with the procurement processes that organisations are accustomed to.
Andrew Davidson, senior vice-president, cloud products at MongoDB, believes that any piece of critical software needs to be built on open source components. “It gives people freedom, flexibility,” he said, “and open source tools are kind of more intuitive.”
However, raw open source code, pulled from public source code repositories such as GitHub, tends to come “as is”, with no warranty. From a support perspective, there are no obligations from either side, said Peter Zaitsev, CEO at Percona. “Things happen based on goodwill relationships and negotiations,” he added. “If you want any guarantees – help and support, bugs fixed, old versions maintained, and so on – this all comes with commercial agreements with companies or individual developers.”
The first misconception is the question of “free software”. For many software developers, their first experience of a new open source tool or component is when they take on board the code within a project and try it out. This “try before you buy” model enables enterprises to deploy proof-of-concept applications. Because there is no commercial licence fee, businesses can continue to run the free version in production and scale up the deployment.
But all the support for the open source used must be managed in-house, where developers reach out to the wider open source community to help them solve particular issues.
Shaun O’Meara, field CTO at Mirantis, said: “People sometimes get very religious about open source software. We’re in the game to make money.”
In his experience, organisations need to select a partner business in order to make the best use of open source software. From a Mirantis perspective, he said: “We provide indemnification, guarantees and handle integration. This is a balancing act between offering the choice that comes from using open source with a managed service and guide rails.
“Open source companies build businesses around providing these value-added services on top of the freely available code. Some, like MongoDB, have gone further, commercialising the product as SaaS [software as a service].”
Beyond offering an open source helpdesk, Davidson believes open source businesses have fundamentally different DNA compared with traditional software companies. “In a commercial software company, customers are responsible for getting the software going,” he said.
When MongoDB started out, the company became the tier 3 support for customers, providing technical updates to the product, said Davidson. But with its Altas software as a service open source data platform, MongoDB is now the first line of support – tier 1.
Although there are a large number of companies commercialising open source with managed services for the enterprise, many widely used open source components are not maintained in this way. Components such as SSH are managed either through committees or a federation of major users, who pull together to fix problems quickly.
“We all need open source standard core building blocks, managed by the federation of users,” said Davidson. When something such as Heartbleed exploits a serious vulnerability, “the entire industry works non-stop to patch the critical component”, he said.
This is how OpenSSH was fixed following revelations of the Heartbleed exploit. Similarly, the community pulled together to patch the Meltdown and Spectre processor vulnerabilities.
Davidson described the way these critical components are developed, maintained and patched as analogous to riding a bike. “You have so many eyes on something,” he said. “But if no one is driving the development of the component forward, just like when someone stops pedalling a bike, the process that keeps open source going falls over.”
Driven by the digitisation trend, software development skills are in high demand, and developers increasingly turn to open source tools and components as their preferred method for building new applications. Amanda Brock, CEO at OpenUK, said that rather than trying to stop software developers using open source, “understand the market you are in and where it makes sense to use open source code”. She added: “Every company needs a policy on open source software. It is not a business model. There is a contract that goes with the software.”
When organisations stipulate open source as part of a request for proposals, Brock warned that the tender process may end up as “a tick-box exercise”. Here the winning tender may go to a firm that says it complies with the OSI model for open source, but it may lack the expertise to support a third-party open source component long-term.
The future for software is increasingly open source. Software developers draw on open source tools and components to help them deliver highly functional software with greater agility. Using open source means they do not have to reinvent the wheel and can instead focus on writing innovative software for the business.
As more open source components become embedded in enterprise IT, the IT leadership team will need to assess whether the free open source code is good enough or whether a managed service or open source SaaS product fits the business’s requirements. Whatever route is taken, support for the component – either through the open source community or a third party – needs to be in place to cover the lifespan of the software-based product that makes use of it.
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An acceptable use policy (AUP) is a document stipulating constraints and practices that a user must agree to for access to a corporate network, the internet or other resources. Many businesses and educational institutions require employees or students to sign an AUP before being granted a network ID.
From an information technology (IT) perspective, an AUP states what a user can and cannot do when using computers and computing resources. This applies whether the organization provides the device or it is a personal device that the user provides.
One of the benefits of an AUP is that it spells out acceptable and unacceptable employee behavior and actions. AUPs also provide a company with a legal mechanism to compel compliance, and they describe penalties for noncompliance.
Internet service providers (ISPs) usually require new customers to sign an AUP. It may be part of a service level agreement (SLA) between the ISP and customer.
The following are nine stipulations that might be included in an ISP’s acceptable use policy:
A disclaimer is often included in an AUP absolving the organization from responsibility for a data breach, malware or other issue. Statements about when a person is in violation of this policy and when law enforcement might be called in could also be included.
The following are examples of areas where an acceptable use policy could be helpful:
Signing an acceptable use policy may be required as part of an employment contract. It often happens during the employee onboarding process or as needed with existing employees.
However, employees must be reminded periodically of their responsibility to understand and adhere to the rules spelled out in the AUP. Some best practices that help employees comply with these policies include the following:
BYOD acceptable use policies are becoming common. Find out more about BYOD policy enforcement and creation.
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March 02, 2022 09:00 ET | Source: PandaDoc PandaDoc
San Francisco, California, UNITED STATES
SAN FRANCISCO, March 02, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — PandaDoc, the leading all-in-one document workflow automation platform, today announced that with the PandaDoc Connector by QuickBooks app, PandaDoc now integrates with QuickBooks Online Advanced, Intuit’s leading financial management platform for mid-sized businesses.

The PandaDoc Connector by QuickBooks app lets QuickBooks Online Advanced (QBOAV) customers create custom templates for specific business needs, merge contracts capability with eSignature and track document status—all from within the QuickBooks platform. Customers will be able to customize vendor and customer-facing documents and save time with automated document creation. Through this integration, growing businesses will be able to leverage the combined power of PandaDoc and QuickBooks to create, track, and sign business critical documents easily and efficiently.
“Our integration with PandaDoc is another step towards delivering solutions that fit the specific needs of mid-sized businesses with ease and efficiency,” said Kelly Vincent, QuickBooks Vice President of Mid-Market Small Business at Intuit. “The flexibility of PandaDoc, coupled with the goodness of QuickBooks Online Advanced, enables our platform to become the single source of truth for document management.”
The PandaDoc Connector by QuickBooks app allows QuickBooks Online Advanced customers to:
“The powerful combination of PandaDoc and QuickBooks technology lets customers connect their QuickBooks Online Advanced invoices to beautiful customer-facing documents,” said Nate Gilmore, CRO, PandaDoc. “Businesses today seek to maximize their time and automate everyday business tasks. Getting business documents e-signed and automating data collection, invoicing, and payments is a great time saver.”
For more information, visit PandaDoc Connector by QuickBooks
About PandaDoc
Since its founding in 2013, PandaDoc has been on a mission to empower growing businesses to thrive by taking the work out of document workflows. PandaDoc provides an all-in-one document workflow automation platform with eSignature capabilities. PandaDoc helps fast-scaling teams accelerate the ability to create, manage and sign digital documents, including proposals, quotes and contracts and more. More than 35,000 customers are using PandaDoc to improve document workflow, insights and speed while providing an amazing experience for the end users. PandaDoc is backed by leading venture firms and corporate investors, including OMERS Growth Equity, G-Squared, Altos Ventures, Rembrandt Venture Partners, One Peak Partners, M12 (Microsoft), and HubSpot. PandaDoc is proudly a remote-first global company.

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The alliance automates insurance document data extraction and delivers intelligence dashboards, equipping risk managers with deeper program visibility
ATLANTA–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Riskonnect, the leader in integrated risk management (IRM) solutions, today announced a new partnership with LineSlip Solutions, the leader in insurance technology for extracting and managing insurance program data. LineSlip’s AI technology is now integrated directly into Riskonnect’s Risk Management Information System (RMIS) solution, enabling customers to significantly streamline and automate insurance program management.

LineSlip reads, extracts, and organizes key policy information without manual keying. Insurance program data is ingested into Riskonnect automatically, allowing customers to take a strategic approach to insurance management and get even more value out of the Riskonnect platform.
“Insurance program management is a critical component of an organization’s risk operations, but it is often riddled with burdensome manual work and paper-based processes,” said Kathryn Carlson, senior vice president of product management at Riskonnect. “Our partnership with LineSlip addresses this pain point with the automatic ingestion of insurance program data into the Riskonnect platform. Our customers now have access to critical insurance intelligence in real time and at their fingertips, enabling strategic insurance program management.”
LineSlip converts key insurance program documents into data-rich insurance intelligence dashboards. Risk managers gain one-click access to a 30,000-foot view of their program information, including coverages, rates, premiums, carrier details, and more. The automatic extraction of insurance document data eliminates tedious, paper-based processes, which streamlines program management and delivers faster reporting, clearer stakeholder communication, fewer errors, and more capacity for risk managers to take on strategic leadership initiatives.
“We’re thrilled to partner with Riskonnect and provide more organizations with easy access to their insurance program data,” said Leo Bernstein, CEO of LineSlip Solutions. “Risk professionals are earning a seat at the table and are increasingly looked upon to help guide their organizations. The ability to quickly tap into insurance intelligence and make informed and confident decisions is critical to this strategic leadership. Our alliance with Riskonnect enables this level of visibility and agility.”
Learn more about Riskonnect’s RMIS solution here.
About Riskonnect
Riskonnect is the leading integrated risk management software solution provider. Our technology empowers organizations with the ability to anticipate, manage, and respond in real-time to strategic and operational risks across the extended enterprise. More than 2,000 customers across six continents use our unique risk-correlation technology to gain previously unattainable insights that deliver better business outcomes. Riskonnect has more than 800 risk management experts in the Americas, Europe, and Asia. To learn more, visit riskonnect.com.
About LineSlip Solutions
LineSlip Solutions is an award-winning SaaS company bringing the digital revolution to the risk and insurance world. The company’s innovative Commercial Insurance Risk Intelligence (CIRI) software converts program documents to data-rich dashboards, giving risk executives instant access to the information they need to stay empowered and effective. This cloud-hosted solution enables faster reporting, clearer stakeholder communication, fewer errors, and more capacity for strategic leadership. Learn more about LineSlip’s solution here.
Corporate Ink for Riskonnect
Anna Morais
riskonnect@corporateink.com
Matter Communications for LineSlip
Brittany Gould
518-937-3720
lineslip@matternow.com
Corporate Ink for Riskonnect
Anna Morais
riskonnect@corporateink.com
Matter Communications for LineSlip
Brittany Gould
518-937-3720
lineslip@matternow.com

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Illustration: Rebecca Zisser / Axios
A sale process has kicked off for Trivest Partners-backed ScanSTAT Technologies, a provider of release-of-information solutions, multiple sources tell Axios.
Why it matters: ScanSTAT sits in the middle of a growing and evolving industry, with hospitals and health care providers demanding quicker access to patient information that's both accurate and compliant, as disconnected systems capture enormous amounts of data.
What's happening: Books are out for the Guggenheim Partners-run sale process, sources say.
State of play: Besides a large M&A opportunity on the release-of-information side, industry players are increasingly diversifying and consolidating health information management offerings to transform the growth trajectory.
Yes, and: We're also seeing companies leverage their access to real-world data to segue into use cases for health analytics. Notably:
Separately, other release-of-information companies that have achieved good scale include:
The other side: It's not uncommon for release-of-information companies to face lawsuits around the fees they generate to retrieve and produce requested patient medical records.
Trivest, ScanSTAT and Guggenheim did not return requests for comment.

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business.com receives compensation from some of the companies listed on this page. Advertising Disclosure
As your business progresses from a startup to an established business, the volume of paper documents grows exponentially, and that stockpiled paperwork wastes space and is difficult to manage. One solution is to digitize everything; you can use digital conversion techniques to convert all of your business’s paper documents to electronic versions that are stored either on your own server or in the cloud. This allows you to manage documents more efficiently, without losing critical documents, thereby avoiding damage to your business’s credibility.
Document scanning, also called document imaging, is the process of capturing digital images of paper documents. The images of the physical documents are then transformed into a digital format using OCR conversion software. OCR, or optical character recognition, scans document images and turns them into text documents. This intelligent conversion allows documents to be searched with relevant keywords.
Editor’s note: Looking for the right document management system for your business? Fill out the below questionnaire to have our vendor partners contact you about your needs.
 
As a small business owner operating on a shoestring budget, you need to slash redundant costs. Having to search through a vast volume of paper documents could result in lost productivity, as well as require additional space to safely archive it all, and those recurring costs add up.  
Document scanning can help small businesses avoid those challenges and, in turn, save money in the long run. You can entrust a document scanning service provider to have paper documents, microfilms, plans, maps, blueprints and other media converted to a digital format. In addition to saving space, converting documents to digital formats makes your documents more secure because you can save them as read-only files, decide who can access each file and encrypt the data.
Digitized files are also easier to access and navigate, leading to improved customer service quality, increased productivity, quicker retrieval of relevant information and alleviation of fear about damaging critical physical documents.
If you have sensitive documents, such as those with financial information, you can use a redaction service to remove sensitive data from the digital files after the paper documents have been scanned.
A data keying service may also be useful after your documents are scanned. This type of service verifies the accuracy of scanned documents and manually inputs information, assuring minimal errors. Data keying allows you to conform to digital data retention stipulations. You just need to specify your preferred layout or format for the data. Digital files can then be incorporated seamlessly into your company’s database.  
After all of your paper documents have been scanned and rendered editable, the paper versions can be destroyed, with the exception of documents required for statutory compliance and other legal purposes. The service provider can shred sensitive documents in bulk.
There are many advantages of digitizing your documents. Here are some of the benefits:
Scanning usually involves using a scanner lens to capture digital images of physical documents. However, basic scans of papers aren’t very useful; because they’re just digital images, all you can do is view them. A reputable scanning service can help you build on the basic functionality of these files by adding the following features:
Here are the different types of document scanning services:
There is really no limit to the types of documents you can digitize. If you are starting from scratch to convert all of your paper documents to electronic versions, it’s best to prioritize the following types of documents:
After you digitize the documents with a high-quality scanner, the next step is to enter the descriptive information needed to identify files. Using intelligent OCR, you can transform scanned images into readable text, and retrieve, read and share them using different apps.
There are hundreds of document digitization services you can choose from based on your business needs. At business.com, we researched document management services to find the best options for small businesses. To do so, we examined several important factors, such as cost, ease of use and storage capacity. Here are the document digitization and management services we selected as our best picks:
Here are some other popular document management systems:
Before choosing a document management system, consider your business’s requirements for storage space, sorting and search tools, and security.
Also, think about where you want the system hosted. Do you want an on-site solution or a cloud-based document service that’s managed by a third party?
Look for a service that allows you to set permission restrictions on certain files, because this lets you control which employees have access to certain documents. Additionally, a system that stores your documents in the cloud is ideal because users can access files from any device with an internet connection – an especially important functionality for businesses with remote employees.
The best document management software allows your team to work and collaborate seamlessly. You shouldn’t have to use multiple programs to manage your paperless documents. Make sure your application has imaging tools that work with your scanner, customizable document-creation templates and tools that automatically format scanned files to match office or industry standards. Having a range of workflow automation tools is helpful, as these tools allow you to create, edit, review and approve all scanned documents for your business. You also want a system that lets you import a variety of digital documents, like PDFs, word processing files, spreadsheets and image files.
Additional reporting by Simone Johnson.

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