With prices rising and office space getting more expensive in most major cities, many organizations are looking to downsize their office space to save on costs, increase efficiency, or prepare for future growth. This often involves removing unnecessary office furniture, making individual workspaces more collaborative, and/or incorporating more hybrid and remote work options for employees. But another way to save space that may not be as obvious is moving away from paper.

When considering storage problems, paper documents are usually not the first thing that comes to mind for many of us. After all, a few sheets of paper only occupy a tiny amount of space; even a hundred pages are almost nothing. But as many office managers know, paper files can start to pile up quickly. Whether they’re kept in boxes, drawers, or filing cabinets, large volumes of paper documents take up space that could be used more effectively. If these collections are regularly accessed, they’ll require constant maintenance to keep them organized, draining valuable employee time and energy.

But you have that paper for a reason. The information contained in those pages is valuable, and it’s not like you can just throw them away. That’s where digitizing comes in. By turning your paper files into digital documents and storing them on a local hard drive or a cloud storage server, you can massively condense the amount of space they require while also opening them up to a huge number of other benefits, like remote access, a variety of organizational tools, and better security options.

There are two ways to digitize your paper files and clear up space: scanning and data entry.

Paper Scanning

Using specialized scanning equipment, you can quickly turn many paper pages into digital images or pdf documents. This option is great for text documents and diagrams, especially when used in conjunction with Optical Character Recognition software, which allows a computer to recognize the text in the image, letting you highlight, copy and paste, or search through it with ease.

While this may sound like something you could just as easily accomplish with a photocopier, specialized scanning machines can process stacks of pages far faster than flat-bed scanners like photocopiers. This makes them perfect for larger projects with hundreds or even thousands of documents.

With top-of-the-line equipment and refined digitization processes, Consentia can process large collections quickly and efficiently. We can also scale our operation to match our clients’ budgets and needs, and our experienced scanning specialists can adapt to your organization’s specific needs.

Data Entry

If the information in your paper files is standardized or quantitative, you’ll probably want to aggregate that data into an organized spreadsheet at some point. Spreadsheets organize all of the important information into one place, making sophisticated analysis and visualizations possible.

Scanning pages only creates digital copies, which is great for text documents but isn’t very helpful with raw data. That data needs to be extracted from the documents and then aggregated before it can be useful.

The value of manual Data Entry digitization is that operators digitize files while simultaneously extracting and aggregating important information. This makes the process simpler and more efficient than scanning and extracting/aggregating afterwards. It’s also more efficient in terms of digital storage space, as it doesn’t require you to temporarily store full images of pages before aggregation.

Consentia’s manual data entry services are scalable, adaptable to your specific requirements, and always double-checked to ensure accuracy.

You can drastically reduce storage space requirements by digitizing your paper files while unlocking access to advanced organizational tools and improved security options. Scanning and data entry are both viable options for digitizing paper documents, with each providing specific benefits that make them more suitable in different situations. No matter what method you choose, Consentia can help you digitize your files quickly, efficiently and securely.

If you’re ready to start downsizing storage requirements in your office, contact Consentia today! Our experienced team is ready to answer any questions you may have and get started on your project. Get in touch today for a free quote!