The recent advancements in document scanning technology have accelerated this service sector up into the upper echelons, and you can now scan your documents in a variety of ways depending on what it is that you need to do with the data.
A nationwide network of document scanning service companies now exists that can provide truly comprehensive scanning facilities.
Many will even visit your premises to perform the scanning on site if you are apprehensive about losing sight of your important or confidential documents.
Document scanning came into its own right with the inevitable development of online communication.
Whereas previously the only way to shoot documents across to somebody at distance quickly was via facsimile, the scanner has now reduced faxing to dinosaur technology.
Personal scanners are now readily available, being combined and built in with computer printers, and are affordably priced.
But these personal scanners are nothing like the professional scanners that are now produced and employed by document scanning specialist contractors.
When document scanning first became available as a contracted out service, the main use was for reducing the bulkiness of archive filing.
Instead of having boxes and boxes containing tons of paper documents, and taking up lots of valuable storage space, it became conceivable to compress hundreds of scanned documents onto a single computer disk.
The space saving is enormous.
There is also a reduction in the fire risk hazard normally associated with having tons of paper floating around, with the extra insurance premiums being avoidable too.
Clever referencing also means that disk archived documentation can be found quickly and easily, saving thousands hours of valuable manual human labour.
Disks can also be password protected, improving their security.
Colour scanning is now standard, so that the colour coded information that is built into spread sheets, flow and pie charts, is not lost in the scanning process.
The colours remain as bright and vibrant as they were originally.
For those companies who have a heavy demand for the rapid scanning of documents on site, scanning contractors will provide a team of people to visit your premises fully armed with all of the necessary hardware to complete the process quickly, efficiently, and affordably One of the latest developments in the scanning industry, is the revelation of OCR, (Optical Character Recognition).
This new technology will allow you to scan written or printed documents, (nothing new in that I hear you say), but now in a way that will enable you to be able to edit the text at will.
So if you have reams and reams of 'hard copy' documents that need editing, you no longer have to laboriously type them all up first, as one of the new OCR capable scanners can do all of the donkey work for you.
The other new innovation now available via the leading document scanning specialist contractors is voice transcription.
This is a very useful service whereby any audio data, (typically any dictation, or recorded on-site meeting minutes), can be analysed and transcribed into hard copy paper documents using the latest technology.
This new development offers a speedy and accurate service, and is used for example by the medical fraternity.
By selecting the right document scanning company, you can get access to any or all of the services listed above to suit your individual requirements.