Outsourcing digitization: the smart choice for small businesses

Digitising records correctly isn't as easy as it sounds. It requires not only special equipment but also a staff trained on the best practices of indexing and metadata tagging. If you want the job done right, outsourcing to a vendor is your best bet.

Here’s the small business benefits for digitisation outsourcing:

1. Use experts, get expert results
   Digital records are easier to search and faster to find but that’s only true if they have been indexed and tagged accurately using metadata. To ensure every scanned record has the correct metadata, you need a knowledgeable digitisation specialist dedicated to meticulous detail.


2. Avoid a capital investment
Not all scanners are built the same. If you want high-definition scans of your most valuable assets, there are very few options outside of spending a lot of money and time. Purchasing professional-grade scanning equipment and software is expensive. Imaging documents is also a time-consuming task that draws your resources away from their core work. Outsourcing makes digitisation faster and more economical.


3. Prevent theft, loss and privacy breach
   Any time a team is digitising in-house, with multiple people handling documents and moving between locations, there’s always the chance of documents being stolen, lost or breached. An outsourced solution mitigates sensitive document risks through a single, secure chain of custody.


4. Ensure information governance and regulatory compliance
   It’s difficult for in-house teams to keep up with changing retention, content classification, and privacy laws. Outsourcing can add the specialised expertise you need to keep your governance policies and practices in bounds and avoid costly mistakes.


5. Evolve to a digital workflow
Incorporating digitisation into your organisation means changing workflows and processes. An experienced vendor offers advice on where to start and how to automate for productivity gains. They may also help your team understand what your company's digitisation needs are, which will help in selecting a digital workflow solution down the line.


6. Right-size your project
   Digitisation isn’t an all or nothing endeavor. There are different levels for different digitisation projects. Choose a vendor that can scale the scope of digitisation to your small business needs and unique workflows.

What happens when smbs try to digitise in-house

• Massive capital investment
• Significant strain on staff
• Inefficiencies and errors from working outside their areas of expertise

Transformative solutionsfor our digital age

“Businesses are increasingly leveraging document outsourcing services during COVID-19 pandemic to streamline dailyoperations…Besides the pandemic, a general requirement to streamline business operations has prompted small,medium and large-scale corporations to invest a major chunk of their revenue in document outsourcing services.”
Future Market Insights

There is no perfect pathway to digital expertise. Each small business approaches the challenge from a different perspective. Wherever your business is on the road to true digital maturity, Iron Mountain has the solutions, technology and expertise necessary to help.

Solve: Digital solutions

Document Imaging/Scanning

Digitise your documents with flexible solutions built around your small business needs.

• Day Forward Scanning
  Scan, index and convert your paper documents when they are produced or received in the normal course of business.
• Backfile Scanning
  Quickly convert legacy paper records to digital files in priority order.
• Image on Demand
  Scan only the records you need when you need them to reduce costs significantly.

Digital Storage

Take the first step on your digital transformation journey with Iron Mountain Insight® Essential Edition. It’s a subscription solution that combines physical document scanning and digital storage in a secure cloud repository. It also gives you the option to integrate documents from other digital repositories or a single file resource solution.

Evolve: Information Governance (IG)

Workflow Automation

Capitalise on digitisation by making processes more effective and efficient. Increase accuracy and reduce administrative burden by automating back office workflows including human resources, contracts management and accounts payable/receivable.

Advisory Services

Get access to the most experienced information governance consultancy in the industry to help you optimise retention, privacy, compliance, content classification and risk management practices. Iron Mountain can even place our experts on-site in your offices for close collaboration on short- or long-term projects.

Policy Centre Solution

Manage your compliance responsibilities with a legally defensible and always current retention schedules. Through an intuitive web-based dashboard, you can easily demonstrate compliance with current regulations, make edits to record classes and share policies to keep employees updated on the latest legal boundaries.

“Before partnering with Iron Mountain, we needed to drop everything, locate and pull invoices and research transaction histories manually. Now, we have online access to invoices to review with a quick keystroke.”
Scott Brunner, Manager of Disbursements & Commitment Accounting, SunGard Availability Services