Digitization drives – the term has become commonplace in corporate circles, educational institutions, universities and governmental organizations. With data that seems to be more omnipresent than the air we breathe, and organizations relying on a lot of past information, paper and print documents and microfiche data need to be converted to the most appropriate digital formats.
Digitization yet to Become Universal
According to the IDC’s findings, information circulating in the world is doubling, with 2011 witnessing the creation and replication of 1.8 zettabytes of data. This could give you an idea of the wealth of data that would be doing the rounds in 2015. Much of this information is being handled and used by businesses and, though digital workflows are the norm, the amount of paper documents too is increasing. This suggests businesses are still being held back by paperwork, and the efficiency that digitization offers has not been fully realized.
There is a good reason behind this – though drives to digitize are being talked about organizations still shun from the task, fearing the extensiveness of the responsibility and the resources it would demand.
Massive Advantages by Digitizing
The advantages are massive though, and companies wouldn’t want to miss out on them. Digitization provides benefits such as:
- Streamlining work processes
- Providing greater data sharing capabilities spanning geographical barriers
- Enhancing security
- Saving physical storage space
- Insulating data from damage caused by environmental catastrophes
While the process of digitizing itself may be resource consuming and expensive it would ultimately result in more cost-effective functioning.
Why Outsourcing Works
Outsourcing digitization has proven to be a more cost-effective proposition and is therefore what businesses should seek, to ensure efficiency and lesser costs. Experienced document conversion companies utilize advanced software including OCR (optical character recognition) and ICR (intelligent character recognition) tools for flawless conversion.
- OCR technology enables printed materials to be converted to word processing files. It helps documents to be saved as Word files, PDFs or other such compatible file formats. Even if the original print document is lost, you wouldn’t need to retype information. When needed, the information can be edited. It can also be retrieved easily from your content management system (CMS) or network drive.
- ICR (intelligent character recognition) enables handwritten documents to be digitized. This is an indispensable tool without which written documents would have to be manually typed, since plain scanning would only save them as image files that cannot be edited.
- Bar code recognition (BCR) and optical mark recognition (OMR) technologies can enable bar codes and other marks to be recognized. This further helps in classifying and separating documents.
With these technologies in place, document scanning and conversion and digitization become more efficient. It is high time your organization felt the benefits of getting your data digitized. Get the process outsourced if you don’t wish to bear the strain.
