In today's highly digitized and automated world, the decision to conduct document scanning in house or to outsource it is one that many businesses consider. Many experts believed that we would be operating paperless offices by now, however the truth is that lots of paper is still generated every day.

When you take a hard copy of a document and scan it so that it becomes a computer document, this is known as document scanning. When the document is in this format, many people can access it from all sorts of places. The process of changing the paper document into a digital format is know as document digitizing. The term scanning actually refers to the physical step involved. Optical Character Recognition, OCR, refers to when a certain type of data that results when a document is scanned.

There are many reasons to consider putting business records in electronic form. Document scanning provides electronic versions of business records. Electronic documents allow for instant access, thus decreasing the time involved in locating a document and increasing the efficiency of customer service. Backup copies of scanned documents are easily made and can be stored off site for security purposes. And, possibly, most important is storage space. Electronic documents can be stored on CDs thus giving the business back the space now used to store paper documents.

Document scanning is often contracted to an outside agency because of the costs involved. Most companies have a lot of files that need to be transferred to the computer. To do this, a company would need to invest a lot of money. They need to buy machinery. A high volume scanner and a verifier is needed if a lot of documents are going to be scanned. When the scanning job is completed and all the files are one the computer, the machines are no longer needed. Some businesses find that they can manage with a low cost scanner or daily needs.

The other price consideration is staffing. Scanning the documents in the first place will take several full-time employees, and this work requires specialized training in relevant equipment and processes. Of course, after the biggest job of scanning all the older documents, there will be less of a need for heavy staff involvement. Dependent on the company size, scanning documents may be delegated across the workforce or added as part of the regular job responsibilities.

There are many options for outsourcing documents. Some services allow you to ship documents to them. They will scan the documents an allow you to review the digital files. If they are approved, the vendor will destory the originals. If space is not a concern, there are also vendors who will bring their equipment and employees to you and scan the documents onsite. Once they have finished, they remove their equipment and leave you the electronic files. Either of these services can assist with ongoing document digitizing as well, depending on the volume.

In this highly automated and digitized world, we still generate a lot of paperwork everyday. Experts have said that we would be in a paperless world by now but that just is not the case. Document scanning involves taking a paper document and making it available in electronic format, thereby allowing multiple users in diverse locations access to the documents. Scanning is a description of the physical process involved, versus document digitizing, which is the process of converting the paper document to a digital format that is machine readable. There is also ocr scanning which involves a specific type of data the machine takes based on the scanned image.