“My first question back to you would be: ‘Why are you keeping paper documents?’” says Keith Moore, chief technologist, worldwide sales and services for HP’s Imaging and Printing Group.
The answers run the gamut from simple convenience to the fact that paper documents are in some cases required for regulatory or other legal reasons to, well, busy companies not quite getting around to actually implementing a disaster recovery plan.
“My second question: ‘What would happen if you really lost these paper documents?’” says Moore. “If it turns out you don’t really need them, you dodged a bullet. But if the documents contain valuable or essential information for myriad business reasons, it’s imperative that you be able to reproduce them. That’s why you need to have a plan in place to digitize or scan them early in the process.”
Companies can choose from several approaches. You can scan as soon as a document comes in the door. Or you can scan after you have finished working with documents. EDS, an HP company, offers such a back-office conversion service for digitizing large volumes of documents at high speeds from a central location.
Once digitized, less critical documents can be shredded. Of course, certain types of documents—such as contracts or financial and medical records—must be kept for regulatory reasons. In this case, you can send them for long-term records retention and scan-on-demand, as needed. HP partners with a number of companies, such as Iron Mountain, to offer you the appropriate document storage and conversion capability.
Here’s a comforting thought should your company be faced with damaged or destroyed paper documents: These days, very few original documents sit on the desktop or in the filing cabinet. An increasing number of documents now begin in a digital format as, for example, Word or Excel files. So when you see papers flying out the door, having a solid digital records retention policy in place can be a lifesaver.
“We’re seeing more documents moving within a start-digital and end-digital environment, with paper transient in the middle,” explains Moore. For example, think of your airline boarding pass as the one remaining paper component of the whole e-ticketing process.
“More times than not, paper is just a printed copy of a digital original stored securely somewhere online. The challenge here is making sure you have a process in place for keeping track of digital documents, so the right people can access them as needed.”
Motivated to re-examine your company’s paper trail?
Start by assessing your document flow and records retention policies.
In many cases, companies have no idea what’s being printed where, what’s available in digital format or what’s stored where in paper or digital form. Oftentimes, different departments or regional offices have different policies and practices in place, so it makes sense to look at the bigger corporate picture.
“We can work with you to conduct a document flow analysis and to implement a sound approach to managing imaging and printing devices as well as records retention,” says Moore.
Where and how you store digital data is a critical component of your solution.
“We can guide you in implementing best practices and policies to help ensure you know what’s stored where, with the level of access and security appropriate to your business needs,” adds Moore. “HP is the one company that can help you plan, design and implement every facet of a your physical-to-digital document and information management strategy—including multifunction printers, document retention systems, indexing solutions, scanning mechanisms, e-discovery and storage systems plus the consulting and outsourcing services to support you at every step.”
Moore offers some smart advice based on real customer experiences.
“After you have developed a document backup and recovery plan, be sure and test it out,” he says. “The worst time to find out the plan is not working is when you really, really need it to.”
The steps you need to take to protect your documents and information before the next unpredictable event roars your way are quite clear: Launch your disaster recovery plan now. Test it and test it again. Then hope you never have to use it.
