3 High-Value Document Digitization Examples

What’s the easiest way businesses can reduce costs and increase profits? These digitization examples have the answer.

Successful leaders know that efficient growth comes from valuable investments, and it’s hard to find a better investment than digitization. Industries from accounting to food delivery and beyond are moving away from paper-based processes to embrace digital models that increase efficiency, lower costs, and maximize profits. For proof, look no further than these digitization examples, highlighting the ways even document storage can drive value.

Read The Complete Guide to Document Digitization discover the benefits of digitization, get process recommendations, and much more.

3 high-value document digitization examples

Nearly all organizations have the potential to benefit from document digitization, whether they are a hotel, a consulting firm, or even a high school. Digital documents can be organized, copied, and referenced far more quickly than their paper equivalents, which leads to corresponding efficiency gains in business processes. Over time, leaders will note a measurable difference in:

• Operational costs: Paper, ink, and photocopying equipment tend to be considered essential costs of an office environment. Digitization reduces or outright eliminates these costs from annual budgets, saving money that can be redirected elsewhere.
• Employee productivity: When employees don’t have to spend time on routine documentation, they can focus on high-value objectives. Organizations that implement digitization solutions tend to see productivity increases that can also boost annual profits.
• Available space: Once businesses adopt digitization, they free up storage space previously dedicated to documents and supplies. Facilities can then be rededicated to more actively beneficial business uses.

With these benefits in mind, let’s take a closer look at practical digitization examples:

Thorndike Medical Centre

Much like any hospital or medical facility, the Thorndike Medical Centre processes a high volume of insurer reports, such as subject access requests or medical report acquisitions. Unfortunately, serving 13,000 patients means organizations like Thorndike face significant process burdens. Approximately 80% of their medical facilities need thirty minutes to an hour to complete subject access requests and often require additional photocopying and postage costs, despite receiving no compensation from insurers.

To address these concerns, Thorndike implemented a document digitization solution. Using Ricoh scanners, employees could scan up to 60 pages per minute, automatically index each record, and fulfill requests that comply with privacy regulations. Moreover, Thorndike’s training and integration processes went off without a hitch, and despite the inherent logistical hurdles to transitioning systems, managers received no negative feedback about the changeover — which speaks volumes by itself.

Arata Certified Tax and Accounting Services

The accounting industry relies on extensive documentation to ensure its records are accurate and in compliance with both commercial and governmental regulations. When that documentation comes in the form of stacks of paper, as it often does, that can mean hours spent simply rendering the data into a usable format. In the case of Arata Certified Tax and Accounting Services , its 10-person sales staff would regularly spend 480 hours every month just manually entering data and confirming its accuracy.

By adding a fi-7180 document scanner and third-party cloud-service to its work processes, Arata was able to dramatically decrease the turnaround time for client documents from upwards of a month to a matter of days. This digitization also helped break down knowledge silos within Arata where certain accounts could only be processed by certain employees, opening the way to better knowledge sharing and accessible formats across the company.

Kanazawa Sakuragaoka High School

When dealing with data that may have a massive impact on the future of their students’ lives, schools must manage their documents as carefully as any corporation. Kanazawa Sakuragaoka High School in Ishikawa, Japan, creates special reports that summarize a student’s personality for university and college admissions. Over the course of a three-year enrollment, each student will have 300 pages of records covering academic life, club histories, and general information on motivating behaviors.

The challenge of managing this level of paper is immense. Off-site digitization services and activity tracking tools could aid in processing these documents, but subscription fees would put an outsized demand on the school’s limited budget. Instead, Kanazawa turned to the fi-7480 business scanner as a digitization alternative.

Under this model, each worksheet includes a barcode associated with the student. Once a report is scanned, it is automatically filed in a Google Drive directory alongside other activity records. This automation removes the need for physical paper storage and resolves any fears that forms may become damaged over time. Meanwhile, Kanazawa could eliminate expenses toward digitization subscriptions and related services, focusing its expenditures on measures that directly benefit its student body.

Digitize documents efficiently with Ricoh's scanner line

Any organization looking to increase productivity and reduce non-essential costs will be well-served by a high-value document digitization solution. We take great pride in having spent the last 50+ years researching, designing, and developing some of the most advanced and powerful electronics in the world, including our professional grade fi and SP Series scanners .

Built to purpose for the most demanding document handling jobs, the fi and SP Series scanners are capable of processing tens-of-thousands of pages per day at the highest levels of accuracy. Their intuitive integration capabilities with all existing work suites minimize time-to-value for businesses looking to invest in tools that will pay dividends for years to come. Click here to learn more or shop the rest of our production scanner line .