There are over 4 trillion paper documents in the United States. That is a huge amount of documents. And on top of that, nine out of every ten of those documents still exist on paper in folders, filing cabinets and piling up on desks across the country. What if one day, one million of those crucial business documents were just gone? I think its safe to say that we would all hope none of them were ours or had to do with our business.
Recently in Brooklyn, NY, a warehouse fire broke out in late January destroying more than 1 million documents from court cases. Companies and lawyers alike lost valuable documents in this fire because they didn’t have digital backups or duplicate paper copies in another location.
Lawyers became concerned that their clients would be angry at the loss of important documents, and then clients began filing lawsuits for negligence. Months of legal hearings and settlements are ahead for these companies as well as the law firms that stored their original paperwork in the warehouse that didn’t have proper sprinklers to extinguish a fire.
Could this have been avoided?
Yes.
Our conversion process is staffed by two very experienced technicians who create over 2 million images every month. We can create digital images for almost any paper document- financial records, catalogs, computer reports and other important business records. We also have strong security measures in place to ensure that your documents are in a secure setting. We are the only document management provider in the area with a “Class A” Temperature & Humidity controlled vault. Learn more about our document conversion process and our storage vault.
If Brooklyn had utilized a electronic document management system and those 1 million files were documented online instead of just stored in a warehouse, the worst of Brooklyn’s worries would be that no one was hurt in the fire.
What can Brooklyn do now?
The recovery process is much more difficult than just having started Document Management in the first place. The files that did not have duplicates are lost, but for the ones that have another copy should be converted to EDMS immediately.
Making the switch to a document management system is simple and a cost effective process of taking hard copies and making them available quickly online through data software. Saving them in the long run $20 to file a paper document, $120 to find the document and $220 to reproduce a lost paper document. Instead of paying more for storage and risk of future fires that may occur.
For more information about electronic document management systems and our conversion and storage process, contact us here.