We are well and truly in the digital age. Computers and digital information are now so deeply ingrained in everybody’s day-to-day lives that almost no area of life has not been affected by it. And of course, this extends into the business world.
Over the past few decades, businesses of all kinds and their documentation have moved from being entirely paper-based to, at least in part, digital. However, the transition is not yet complete and, despite all the advantages of digitization, many businesses still heavily rely on paper documents.
As the move to digital marches on, businesses are increasingly looking for ways to make the digitization process more efficient. In this article, we look at the reasons why digitization is important for any organization and how you can digitize more effectively.
What is data digitization and why is it important?
In the context of documents, digitization is simply the transfer of data from physical paper-based formats to digital formats. This may cover any kind of data such as text and images.
But what are the main advantages of digitization? And what’s the rush?
Security
A major benefit of digital data is that it can be significantly more secure than physically stored data. There are countless cases of paper documents going being lost, damaged, stolen, copied without permission, and destroyed. Take the recent blunder by the UK government, where highly classified information was found at a bus stop.
Properly stored digital data does not suffer from these issues. With sufficient digital protections in place, organizations can drastically improve their data security and limit access to specific information. This is important for any operation, but particularly for those dealing with personal and sensitive data, such as banks, insurers, healthcare organizations, and so on.
Ease of storage
Paper-based documents are unavoidably cumbersome, and before long they start to take up enormous amounts of space. The storage of documents is also expensive, and not just because of the large amounts of space they require. Many businesses need to hire dedicated employees simply to archive and file paper documents, and it takes time to file, retrieve, copy, and replace documents, all of which costs businesses money.
Digital documents also need to be stored somewhere, but digital storage takes up a fraction of the space that paper does. This can result in large savings for businesses, providing a big incentive to digitize as much information as possible.
Better for the environment
The environment is now at the forefront of almost every business conversation and is an increasingly common policy driver. Unfortunately, paper-based documents have a large carbon footprint. Not only is there the deforestation often caused by paper consumption, but also the transportation of physical documents, printing and copying, and more, all of which contribute to environmental damage.
While digitally stored documents do have a carbon footprint in the form of electricity, the environmental costs can be significantly lower than the paper alternative. This fact is likely to become an increasingly important consideration, and further advances the case for digitization.
Simpler sharing and editing
In any organization, documents and information need to be regularly shared, edited, and copied within the organization and with other stakeholders. The limitations of paper-based documents in this context are clear. It is simply impractical, expensive, and slow to share documents physically when they can be digitized and shared instantly anywhere in the world.
However, many businesses still rely, at least partially, on physically signing documents, mailing paper copies of documents, and other seemingly outdated, inefficient practices that are necessary with paper.
Digital documents bypass all of these limitations, allowing organizations to share, edit, and collaborate on documents almost immediately, for a tiny fraction of the cost.
How can you digitize more effectively?
There is a clear case for digitization, and the above points only cover a few of the most basic advantages. Most businesses, if not all, do already use digital documents to some extent, but very few utilize them as much as they could or should. After all, old habits die hard, even when they are clearly detrimental to business.
When businesses do digitize, they often do so in inefficient ways. Traditionally, the only way to digitize was to have employees manually transfer data from a paper document into a computer. But this method is slow, inaccurate, and expensive. So how can businesses upscale their digitization and digitize more effectively?
The simplest way to digitize is by using specialized software, known as optical character recognition (OCR) software. OCR platforms automate the transfer of data from paper form to digital, making digitization massively more efficient.
More recently, AI-based OCR platforms have been developed, using advanced technology to improve accuracy rates, speed, and compatibility. AI OCR can eliminate the need for manual data transfer, saving businesses money and helping to make all the benefits of digitization more accessible.
Why choose Digitise.AI for your business?
The Digitise.AI software platform is dedicated to making large-scale document digitization accessible to everyone. Our technology uses advanced machine learning and AI to ensure accurate, rapid digitization of any document, helping businesses streamline their data management.
To ensure total compatibility with any document, our experts can pre-train Digitise.AI’s algorithms to understand and accurately digitize any specified document format automatically. We also offer multi-language support to ensure support to suit an even wider range of client needs.
With Digitise.AI, you can rely on exceptional accuracy, an intuitive design, integration with your existing data systems, and more.
Talk to our team today to schedule a demo and see Digitise.AI in action.