As more and more offices go paperless, you may find that scanning and digitizing important documents, then filing them on a computer and backing them up to CD or an online server, gives them an extended life beyond the file cabinet.

Digitized documents have a more useful life because they’re searchable and editable. You can’t edit a paper document without recreating or copying it. Nor can you search for it except by hand and eye.

Performing a desktop keyword search of your computer files can help you to locate them quickly and Optical Character Recognition (OCR), a feature of ScanSnap, enables you to you locate the document through keywords buried within the document. Scanning a document also allows you to edit it. The ability to edit or copy and paste information from one document into another is a huge time-saving advantage of the digital age.

These advantages give the scanned document more intrinsic value than the physical document. It is easier to store, too, taking up space on a computer or server that’s so small you barely notice it.

In addition, scanned documents can be stored and saved in a free or low cost cloud computing environment, saving more money than you would storing them physically.

Where paper gets in the way after a while – old files in businesses are frequently boxed and sent off-site to deep storage – electronic files can stay in close proximity on a network. Anyone can retrieve the oldest and most obsolete file when necessary if it’s been scanned. Using a digital filing system with your document scanner allows even the oldest files to continue to be useful.

Megan Fowler
Marketing Communications Manager
Fujitsu Computer Products of America, Inc.