The world has been striving for a paperless office for some time now. Decades, in fact. Sadly, saving the trees often comes in a distant second to security. Yet many offices find that they are wasting so much time and effort in saving their important information in different places and formats.
Even in this modern age, many of us find that we are still working with hard-copy and digital info. You save it to your hard drive, and then you save it to the cloud – and then you print it out to take to a meeting. The security risk linked to the unmanned paper drifting about in offices is a major problem.
How can you manage hard copies quickly and safely?
Many companies enjoy the use of a multi-functional device with which you can scan, print and copy to your corporate heart’s content. Perhaps, though, you just need a scanner to make sure that all your paperwork coming into your office is saved somewhere safe. In a place where you can find it when the time comes!
Paper copies of key documents are easily compromised – stolen, copied or destroyed. Or, most often, misfiled.
Scanning these papers into a safe electronic format is a good start. From a security angle, they are safer behind a passworded firewall in a cloud with all the modern security features. After that, shredding paper copies (again with the security) creates a closed loop where we all know where everything is.
Scanning doesn’t solve everything, of course.
It’s interesting to note, though, that some documents (such as cheques, certificates or those in which the value lies only in the original) will alter with scanning. So you can keep an electronic record of them, but they cannot be printed out and used.
These features often take the form of watermarks – where the ink is white and cannot be copied or scanned.
Alternatively, some make use of the void pantograph. This is a series of dots or dashes, invisible to the naked eye, which will display the word “void” once copied. In the same way, the use of copy-evident paper (or security paper) will give the same result.
In a nutshell, it is far easier to control the movement of documents and info within your office when it is in a digital format. Which is why many companies opt to use a scanner to keep their vital information in a safe place.
Stand-alone scanners are a snap to use. most of the work is done for you. If you have a flat surface to scan that will fit onto the scanner’s reading window, with a non-reflective surface – then you’re on your way. Plug and play technology means that you simply, plug your scanner in – allow it to load its software onto your machine – and voilà! Your scans will show up in a selection of software packages which makes them easy to work with … and easy to save.
Call us on 011 789-1608 or visit us at www.mailmech.co.za and let us find a scanning solution for your office.