Businesses that are looking to transition from a room of filing cabinets to an electronic database management services are making a good decision: it saves money and time for all staffers that have to access paperwork and documents. However, similar to other large company-wide decisions, this process requires time and effort.
At Daniel's Harvest Financial in Napa Valley, California, owner Chal Daniels looked back on his business' journey. Since the change of data processes, Daniels was able to transform the 10 foot by 10 foot storage room into another employee's office. Nonetheless, scanning 19 years worth of information was not easy.
"It's not plug-and-play software," Daniels told Financial Advisor Magazine. "You have to think about setting up a filing system that mirrors how you organized the drawers of your file cabinets."
Daniels' team had to communicate with many agencies, like the California Department of Corporations, the Security and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority to make sure that operations would go smoothly. Through the support of his team of two full-time workers and a part-time employee solely dedicated to bulk scanning, the transition took about a year a half. Since the change, workflow has heavily improved at Daniel's Harvest Financial.
"By going paperless, I can spend more time with clients listening and finding their solutions," Daniels explained. "That is what any office system is all about."
Even though only 25 percent of Daniels' clients regularly receive electronic documents, Daniels is still working to expand his electronic services. The latest service would be to obtain e-signatures from individuals.
Tab Service Company is a Chicago based company with over 53 years of experience as a data processing service provider. We provide business with outsourcing solutions for document scanning services, data entry services and mailing/lettershop services. As a SOC2-approved organization, we apply industry-best practices to our approach with clients.