How to best digitise documents — efficiently and securely

Digital documents are a smarter way to run your business. By cutting costs and securing important data — digital transformation is redefining how businesses work. With bulk scanners and AI-driven document management, you can streamline processes and improve efficiency. Business can digitise documents to enhance workflow management. Let’s understand how going paperless helps you grow.

What is document digitisation?

Digitised documents are paper documents that have been scanned and converted into digital copies. Digital document scanning offers a secure storage solution and provides a reliable backup, ensuring the safety and privacy of these documents.

Advanced digital scanning goes beyond simple document or image capture. It allows documents to be categorised and stored in specific sections, enabling easy organisation, bulk scanning and quick retrieval. This approach also facilitates editing as needed, offering an efficient and secure approach to digital record management.

In today’s business landscape, the global shift towards digitalisation has led many companies to embrace remote work models. This transformation has made digital documentation a crucial part of business growth, impacting client interactions, employee communication and customer collaboration. Moving away from paper documents also helps reduce costs while ensuring data backup when required

Why is it necessary?

Businesses today are focusing on reducing costs and optimising operations. Digitising documents helps in streamlining the workflow efficiently and securely. Here’s how each component is essential for transforming your business.

Cut costs (Strategic outcome):

• Automates the collection of physical data and integrates it with digital sources.
• Streamlines operations, reducing overall costs.
• More cost-efficient and environmentally friendly by minimising paper usage and office supplies.

Automatic data extraction (Technical capabilities):

• Advanced AI technologies include optical character recognition (OCR), intelligent character recognition (ICR), optical mark recognition (OMR), fuzzy matching, and iterative matching.
• Automatically identifies and redacts sensitive information.
• Streamlines document processing with automated functions, enhancing efficiency.

Clearing out space(Efficiency) : 

• Digitise documents to free up physical storage space.
• Remove clutter and save money.
• The conversion of digital documents helps create more space while reducing storage costs.

Bulk scanning (Operational scalability): 

• Digital software can process up to 1000 pages at a time.
• Delivers up to 99% accuracy.

Structuring data (Data management is easy): 

• Data is refined and transformed into an accurate, consistent and relevant format. 
• This organised data collection helps in analysing and tracking documents, improving the decision-making process. 

Authorised access(Access control): 

• Permissions can be tailored to departments or stakeholders, allowing controlled access to data.
• Access can be limited to view-only or granted for full document handling as needed.

Security(Risk management): 

• Digitising documents enables secure backups and faster document retrieval.
• Secure document management software is crucial for protecting sensitive information. 

In recent research done by IBM, data breach costs have increased to $5.17 million, highlighting the need for advanced AI-driven secure document scanning.

Is document scanning secure?

A primary concern that emerges is the security of sensitive data and crucial documents.

However, digitised documents are generally more secure than paper-based storage because all the documents can be backed up on the cloud. Paper documents are more vulnerable to calamities like floods, fires, or theft. Digitised documents are generally more secure than paper-based storage because all the documents are advised to be backed up on the cloud. An effective, advanced AI document management tool further ensures business continuity through secure and automated backups.

Multiple proactive layers: Digitising documents involves multiple proactive layers. The scanning service provides cloud storage and permits access.

Password protected:  Password protection helps secure documents and adds an extra layer of security to keep the documents protected.

Permitted access: Permitted access helps protect the documents from unauthorised access and maintains the integrity of the organisation. Digitised documents offer enhanced security through encryption, making them far more resilient to unauthorised access than their physical counterparts.

Proprietary Active Redaction by XBP Europe: XBP Europe uses proprietary technology which offers active redaction of sensitive information during the scanning process. Real-time redaction adds a prospective layer, which is beneficial in industries such as finance or medicine.

How to digitise documents?

Digitising documents efficiently organises organisational data, but proper structuring is crucial to maximise the benefits of this process. Secured digital documents can enhance the document management process. Below are ways to handle your documents:

1. Access the document: Retrieve the document and prioritise it based on your business needs.
2. Department categorised: Organise documents by department to improve efficiency and ensure better control within your digital document management system.
3. Prepare and clean:  Ensure the documents are properly separated and unnecessary clutter is discarded. 
4. Hierarchical classification and setting access: Classify documents based on which department or personnel should handle them, and set access permissions according to roles.
5. Standardised names: Have a fixed standard way to set the names in a specific pattern. Document standardisation helps in managing and finding documents easily.  
6. E.g. DD/MM/YYYY_department_topic.
7. Using a Tag or keywords: Using relevant keywords can help in finding a particular document collection easily. 
8. Archiving: Archiving inactive documents and keeping the active document management space uncluttered is an essential practice.

Which documents can be digitised?

Various businesses have different document formats and structures, which can be challenging to manage. Software like digital scanning and IDP offers an automated solution that uses advanced technology. This improves efficiency in managing digitised documents.

Challenging documents:

Handwritten: Handwritten documents have inconsistent writing, different colours and a poor scanned copy.

Scanned Images: Scanned copies are often blurry, low quality or skewed angles.

Unstructured data: Data that has no specific format, for example, e-mails, contracts, etc.

Invoices: Invoices are semi-structured documents, the structure of invoices can vary depending on the business.

Solution: 

Intelligent document processing (IDP) is the answer to the above challenges. The advanced algorithms, utilising OCR and NLP, classify documents into predefined types (e.g., invoices, contracts, reports). 

The system implements optical character recognition (OCR), natural language processing (NLP), and machine learning (ML). These technologies are used to identify patterns for automatic document classification. The system then extracts key data points from the documents. To learn more about Intelligent Document Processing, see How Intelligent Automation Transforms Document Processing Workflows

Business documents that can be digitised:

Maintaining paper records is difficult and not a secure way to store documents. Almost any document or business-related data can be digitised. Here are some common examples:

Legal: Legal departments deal with a lot of paper documents like contracts, NDAs, etc. Digitising these records improves management, fosters better collaboration, and streamlines research. The digital recording is cost-effective, secure and time-saving.

HR: The Human Resources department manages a huge number of employees and company data. Digitisation is essential for company compliance, privacy and safeguarding employee details.

Banking, finance: Banking and finance department has sensitive, confidential documents like transactional records. Digitising documents accelerates the banking process and helps in redacting sensitive information.

• Improved Patient Care
• Operational Efficiency 
• Security and Compliance General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

Medical documents: The healthcare industry deals with highly confidential patient information, making secure and compliant digitisation a top priority. Electronic Health Records (EHRs) are a cornerstone of modern healthcare, offering numerous benefits for both providers and patients”

Logistics: Document digitisation can integrate advanced technology and AI automation that help in building more resilient and sustainable supply chains for the future. Documents such as shipment tracking, invoicing, and data sharing with employees, vendors or clients.   

FAQ

Why should businesses use digitised documents? 

Digitised documents offer several benefits, some of which are: they save storage space while enhancing security, provide a workflow to increase productivity and support collaboration

Is it secure to digitise the document?

Yes. Using a secure, encrypted document management system provides greater protection than physical files, reducing risks of loss, damage, or unauthorised access.

Which documents can be digitised? 

Almost any document can be digitised. 

 Here are a  few examples: 

• Invoices
• Contracts 
• HR documents, Employee records 
• Legal
• Medical records 
• Historical documents that are archived

How can we digitise a document? 

A dedicated Document management system helps index, encrypt, and securely store documents, ensuring they are easy to organise and retrieve.

Digitising documents can help your business transition to a paperless, more sustainable environment while significantly reducing paper usage.

Discover how digitising documents can enhance your business efficiency. Get the detailed demo here.