The digitisation of records, and subsequent digital document management process, is a huge part of modern document management. Many, if not all, companies are thinking about this part of records management for a variety of reasons.

Digitisation is of obvious importance. The fact that digital records can be duplicated and saved in numerous places means that they can be accessed, disseminated, stored and retrieved with an ease that is obvious when it is compared with physical records.

What’s more, modern Kenya, as most recently, and obviously, evidenced by KRA’s new eTIMS process, is going paperless. Big businesses, huge administrative bodies and organisations with widespread operations are increasingly stepping away from paper storage.

Of course, there are certain documents, usually the most important ones, that will continue to be kept in physical form. Customer sign-up forms, at banks and insurance companies; tax reports and original documents for leases and contracts will all continue to be kept in paper. For these documents, the importance of managing and keeping them appropriately is clear.

What may be less clear is the fact that digitisation doesn’t mean organisations can do away with the processes behind records management. Digital records need to be managed and organised just as much as physical ones do. They also need to be considered as a part of a retrieval and delivery process just like physical records.

The dangers of digital records not being kept in an efficient, organised manner are the same dangers faced in physical records management. Loss, damage, even theft of digital records can result in just the same bad news as physical records.

This article is designed to tell you everything you need to know about this new turn in the records management space.

How digitisation is done

Digitisation is a surprisingly manual process. It’s also one that has several steps to it.

The first stage of digitisation involves a decision made by the document’s owner. At the Filing Room, we ask our clients to first decide on the structure of the file. If it’s a big folder, a lever arch document holder, we ask our client to inform us of the folder’s comprising parts and which of these parts should become their own digital document.

After the document’s structure has been decided on and broken down, we create a digital folder to hold the document. We usually house this folder on a hard drive or even in cloud-based storage and, within the folder, we organise for smaller sub-folders.

Once we’ve done that, we take the physical file and process it by removing staples, fasteners, paper ties and anything else that attaches several pieces of paper together. Then we put it through our industrial scanner.

At the Filing Room, we’ve got a state-of-the-art industrial scanner. It scans fifty sheets per minute, reads both sides of a paper document at the same time and it even autocorrects if a piece of paper is lain the wrong way up.

Within our digital folders, and after the document has been scanned, we’ll input the document with its proper name, usually replicating the name from the physical document unless the client says otherwise.

Lastly, we deliver the digital files to our client however they want it.

 

If your company is considering the digitisation of their records, inquire about the process and how appropriate digital document management can be implemented into your system today.