Document Overload: Dealer Commercial Imaging, Backfile Scanning Services Bring Digital Order to Paper Mess

As is the case with any product or service in an office equipment dealer’s arsenal, the primary challenge is getting clients and prospects to recognize the need for a given solution. The catalyst for conversations that ultimately lead to making a decision often occurs when an operational process breaks down and needs to be remedied ASAP. Or, for the more enterprising sales reps, a fairly significant ROI or process improvement can be demonstrated to the client. Time and money savings are the ultimate attention-getters.

But even during a strong economy, it can be difficult to sell a “should-do” solution when the remedy doesn’t address an immediate need or is viewed as a project that can be kicked down the road. The key is positioning an offering as a priority. In the case of commercial imaging/backfile scanning—the art of digitizing hard-copy documents, microfilm, microfiche and other media for use in an ECM platform or other data repository—the value of this service became quickly apparent during the pandemic.

For many paper-intensive organizations, the need to have physical forms and documents readily available became an issue when COVID-19 scattered office workers into their homes/remote work environments. Employees needed to access hard-copy documents that were either sitting in a filing cabinet or buried among a cadre of banker’s boxes, and with offices closed or limited, it shifted the “should-do” project to “must-do” status.

From law firms to manufacturing and even some stubborn health care clients, there are plenty of vertical opportunities to drag paper-intensive businesses into the 21st century by converting paper clipped, stapled and well-loved physical forms into indexed, searchable digital files that can be accessed anywhere, anytime. And with businesses always on the lookout for ways to reduce their physical footprint, eliminating file cabinets and ditching banker’s boxes enables them to repurpose available square footage.

For this month’s State of the Industry report on document disposition, we spoke with a half-dozen dealers who offer commercial imaging services—either independently or in tandem with a manufacturer—thus completing the document lifecycle span all the way through to destruction. They’ve graciously provided examples of successful engagements that help paint a picture of the scope and process of what can be a significantly large and time-consuming undertaking.

Physical Threats

For a dealer such as Nashville, Tennessee-based RJ Young, the peril that faces business has been made all too clear within the past two years. In addition to the pandemic, the dealer’s headquarters (and the town itself) has suffered through a devastating tornado and building explosion. That amplifies the need to ensure that vital information doesn’t perish along with physical assets.

RJ Young’s commercial imaging and information governance business has grown exponentially this year, notes Chad Lagrone, vice president of technology services. The success spurred by the ongoing digitization of the office has prompted the dealer to build out full scanning centers in both its Nashville and Jackson, Mississippi, locations.

“We are very fortunate to have 40,000-plus current customers, most of which have had to change the way they do business since the pandemic,” Lagrone said. “We have armed our salesforce with talk tracks and case studies around digitizing the office and truly understanding the document life cycle within each of our customer’s organizations. These conversations naturally lead to conversation around imaging/backfile scanning.”

We have armed our salesforce with talk tracks and case studies around digitizing the office and truly understanding the document life cycle within each of our customer’s organizations.

– Chad Lagrone, RJ Young

With such a specialized discipline, many of the customer questions are universal: Are documents scanned on-premise or at the vendor? What happens once the file becomes digital? What becomes of the paper file? How long does it take? What are the costs? RJ Young ties it all together with a dedicated project manager and a well-defined and documented scope of work.

One RJ Young project entailed a northwestern client for which the engagement is open-ended; it began with a three-year agreement that was recently extended for another three years. The dealer has two full-time employees on-site who are responsible for scanning work orders, vendor forms and the like, validating indexed information using automated capture software to provide quality assurance. The files are stored and indexed for internal retrieval in a content management platform that RJ Young supplied to the client.

“We then complete audit forms to shred the documents and send over to the legal and compliance analyst,” Lagrone noted. “We shred the documents and create a certificate of destruction. This has allowed our customer to focus on its true core business.”

Marrying us with KDI’s customer base allows us to go in and support them with more products and services and demonstrate where they may have a need for these services.

– David Mielnicki, IMR Digital

Dedicated Division

KDI Office Technology of Aston, Pennsylvania, took a substantial step into the world of digitizing files with the 2019 acquisition of IMR Digital, a document scanning, imaging and indexing services specialist. IMR debuted as Micrographics International in the late 1970s, serving the needs of health care, legal, finance, education and government entities. Certain clients, particularly government, are mandated to maintain files for a defined period, and IMR Digital can provide chain-of-custody certification and documentation for files in the event that hard copy or digital sources need to be shredded, erased or destroyed.

According to David Mielnicki, director of sales, conversion services for IMR Digital, the union with KDI Office Technology opened the door to a list of 5,000-plus clients, and the groups work in concert to support client needs on the scanning, backfiling and imaging side. “The combination really provides the complete life cycle, from the inception of the record itself all the way through to destruction,” he said. “Marrying us with KDI’s customer base allows us to go in and support them with more products and services and demonstrate where they may have a need for these services.”

Anthony Parrell, director of conversion services, believes IMR Digital’s experience in digitizing helps to bring the need into focus for clients. “A lot of people think you just shake a box of documents into a scanner and it comes out the other end,” he said. “There are a lot of things we can show them, ways to leverage the information they already have on paper and enhance the ways to optimize it. They need to see the value in it. Fortunately, we have really good salespeople and tech support who can bring the customers into that world.”

Part of the problem, according to Mielnicki, is that clients believe they can wrangle large projects courtesy of their MFP scanners. Others have used different providers who scan documents without indexing or identifying content properly. Without that indexing strategy, the outcome can be a hard-copy mess transformed into a digital mess.

This is where IMR Digital steps up to the plate. It sells DocuWare’s content management platform, which can leverage the digitized content for a myriad of purposes—quickening searches, performing workflow process and interacting with other departmental functions. Some clients rely on digital conversion to monetize their information, such as a university wanting to market directly to its alumni.

Once you digitize a record, you now have a portable file that can be manipulated and ingested into many different types of platforms, which is a benefit.

– Anthony Parrell, IMR Digital

“Once you digitize a record, you now have a portable file that can be manipulated and ingested into many different types of platforms, which is a benefit,” he said. “That’s where the expertise comes in; we work to help them navigate and get that information into whatever content management platform or system they want to have those records stored in.”

One of the larger recent projects undertaken by IMR Digital was a 32-million image job for a local county’s Department of Human Services. There were 15,000 boxes of records, or enough to fill 14 tractor-trailers. The endgame was to enable users to access information from multiple locations in real-time as opposed to the laborious process of sifting through boxes. The job took a year and a half to finish, and IMR Digital also had to deal with DHS needing various documents while the project was still in process. That the files dealt with high-risk children added a degree of difficulty, and IMR Digital had to ensure the secure transfer of information back and forth.

“There’s a lot of work that goes into it behind the scenes that needs to be considered by the customer when dealing with this type of situation,” Parrell noted. “Fortunately, we have the capability and firepower to literally convert that many records, index them and get it back to the client in a usable fashion in that short a period of time.”

Roll with Changes

The development of Repeat Business Systems’ commercial imaging business has mirrored the changing needs for how businesses access information. The Albany, New York-based dealer has been growing its offering over the past seven years, according to President Dawn Abbuhl, as customers appreciated the company’s ability to curate the document life cycle and convert it for easy data storage and access.

Repeat Business System leverages Ricoh’s business process outsourcing document scanning service, and its first project was performed for a private-school account. Abbuhl notes the service truly took hold for Repeat at the onset of the pandemic, when businesses couldn’t easily access on-premise documents.

In engaging with customers at the onset of a project, Abbuhl’s team tries to incorporate the best of the client’s current processes into a new secure, digital workflow. “Having those big-picture conversations up front in a discovery setting allows us to understand concerns around some staff being resistant to change, for example,” she said. “Often we find processes are currently being done in multiple systems, with many different document types and a lack of consistency, so creating a big picture plan early—even developing some policy—and providing great training help guide the implementation to be successful.”

Prior to the pandemic, it could be a difficult sell for clients to see the value of curtailing the growing paper avalanche, even as it threatened to limit space. But COVID-19 changed the conversation from space to accessing documents, which was highly disruptive for real estate and law firm clients. This crystallized the need for specific and immediate relief.

Having those big-picture conversations up front in a discovery setting allows us to understand concerns around some staff being resistant to change.

– Dawn Abbuhl, Repeat Business Systems

Abbuhl cited a project the dealer embarked on for a growing credit union. During a six-month span, Repeat Business Systems built and implemented an HR onboarding process with forms and workflow. The dealer scanned all active and non-active employee files, including medical and 401K—all indexed and searchable in the new document management solution. Scanning roughly 200,000 images freed up valuable physical space while providing time savings on a daily basis for HR and simplifying annual audits.

“With a document management platform in place, it is easy to continue to add workflow and process improvements throughout the organization,” she said. “Regardless of what branch location an employee is working in for the day, or even working from home, they can be productive and securely access current versions of information.”

Growth Offering

Another dealer that relies on Ricoh as its commercial imaging partner is Woodhull LLC of Springboro, Ohio. The OEM and dealer tag team on the client audit and assessment, and jobs are primarily shipped to Ricoh’s Cleveland facility, according to Robert Woodhull, marketing manager. The offering has become a cornerstone of the dealer’s software portfolio, and Woodhull attributes much of the success to the strong relationship with the manufacturer.

Being able to demonstrate an immediate ROI and offer relief from the acres of paper mass can make for a compelling case to move forward with a scanning project, according to Woodhull. “When there’s 1,200 square feet of bankers boxes, and we offer to digitize and put them into any format desired, clients tangibly can see the process and the project unfold. On top of that you show an ROI, which is pretty immediate,” he said.

“Unlike some document solution software that is process-oriented but the process isn’t tangible, it’s hard for C-level and middle management people to wrap their heads around it. But when we perform a commercial imaging or scanning services project that saves space and provides accessibility, it resonates a lot better.”

Municipalities mandated to be able to reproduce documents find the time savings, which is upward of 50%, to be most compelling. And while paper-intensive organizations are prime candidates, Woodhull notes that any client embarking on a facility move can be attracted to the thought of downsizing.

When there’s 1,200 square feet of bankers boxes, and we offer to digitize and put them into any format desired, clients tangibly can see the process and the project unfold.

– Robert Woodhull, Woodhull LLC

Woodhull cited an example of a municipal court client that had been incurring fines because it was unable to reproduce documents in a timely or accurate manner, if at all. With the help of Ricoh, the year-long project produced nearly two million document scans, converting court cases between 1998 and 2012 that had been housed in banker’s boxes into the municipality’s case management software.

Newer Offering

Imaging and backfile scanning services have been a part of Applied Imaging’s portfolio for more than seven years. The Grand Rapids, Michigan-based dealership converts paper documents, bound books, microfilm/microfiche, DVDs and audio/video files to digital format and also offers scanning hardware and secure document destruction.

According to Mari Martin, ECM and backfile specialist for Applied Imaging, the dealer can address wide-ranging security needs as required by agencies working with police files, court documents or any information deemed a potential security risk. She notes Applied Imaging can counsel clients on tackling high-volume projects scattered throughout an organization, in multiple formats, while addressing cost concerns through financing.

“We focus the conversation on their retention schedule and how it applies to each collection of documents,” she said. “This helps discern what documents should be considered for a backfile project.

We suggest breaking the backfile projects down into phases to spread it over time and budgets.

– Mari Martin, Applied Imaging

“We suggest breaking the backfile projects down into phases to spread it over time and budgets. We also offer to run a backfile test of a few boxes to provide a better idea of what the actual project costs will be. Then the proposal quantities can be adjusted to better match the project.”

Applied Imaging is currently working with a public-school district on a project that so far has encompassed nearly a million scanned pages—student records, HR, administrative, among others—to address a space crunch that was becoming unwieldly. The district wanted to remodel its existing storage area to repurpose it as office space. Since the district had an existing software solution, Applied Imaging scanned and indexed it for upload, providing space relief in addition to increased security for HR and simplified access.

Backfile conversion is a great addition to our services portfolio because we now can truly help a customer with their entire document life cycle by migrating legacy documents into digital format and exporting into our ECM solutions.

– John Lowery, Applied Imaging

“Backfile conversion is a great addition to our services portfolio because we now can truly help a customer with their entire document life cycle by migrating legacy documents into digital format and exporting into our ECM solutions,” said John Lowery, Applied Imaging president.

Key Partnerships

Coordinated Business Systems of Burnsville, Minnesota, has been offering commercial imaging services for the past five years. The dealer utilizes Kyocera’s DataBank for backfile scanning, and Kyocera has facilities throughout the U.S. that Coordinated can tap on a per-box or pre-project basis. Completed files are returned to Coordinated using a naming convention created in tandem with the client, then uploaded to a digital archival system (Square 9‘s GlobalSearch is Coordinated’s system of choice), according to Jeff Osgar, solutions specialist.

“Getting these files digital is one thing, but what we tend to find is that without a repository or naming convention set up, your paper mess slowly turns into a digital mess,” Osgar said. “Having that back-end system is where I and my team come into play. We’re able to provide that to the customer in a standardized, easy-to-use, customizable, very scalable solution with GlobalSearch.”

When engaging in business optimization conversations with clients, Osgar notes they will invariably point to their filing cabinets. That’s where Osgar comes into play; he’ll perform a deeper dive and a greater understanding of what the customer is seeking to accomplish from a strategy standpoint. Coordinated works with Square 9/DataBank/Kyocera and the client throughout the process to determine the scope of work. It’s during the discovery that Osgar can get a better handle on the different types of documents employed and identify outliers or stragglers to the scanning process.

There are going to be some curveballs, but our teams are prepared for it and we communicate throughout the process and work with the customer to get the result they’re seeking.

– Jeff Osgar, Coordinated Business Systems

“There are going to be some curveballs, but our teams are prepared for it and we communicate throughout the process and work with the customer to get the result they’re seeking,” he added.

On one project, Coordinated worked with a company that provides waterproofing systems for both residential and commercial use. The client has been furnishing waterproof sealing for dwellings since 1965, and it offers customers a lifetime warranty. Between the company’s inception and 2016, all of its warranty history was kept on paper, so the project entailed digitizing 26,000 warranties and corresponding documents. Now, if a client calls the waterproofing firm for service or warranty information, employees can digitally search the customer via name, address or date of service.