Secure Document Storage by the Numbers

When considering secure document storage, secure shredding, and retention scheduling, many business owners are shocked to discover just how big of an impact these services can have on their bottom line.

If you’ve never given it much thought, or if you’ve never actually tracked the dollars and cents involved in maintaining your current system of document management, the following statistics can be eye-opening. 

Effective document management saves time

As everyone knows, time is money. Of course, it can be difficult to quantify throughout the day, week, or month, as a few wasted minutes here and there. To get a better idea, these numbers show the time wasted due to poor document management:

• Nearly 75% of time spent working with paper-based information is wasted in searching and filing. - Coopers & Lybrand
• Professionals spend 5-15% of their time reading information, but up to 50% of their time locating pertinent information. – PricewaterhouseCoopers
• Paper reduces office productivity. Of a total 8 hours wasted per week in paper management, finding documents wastes 1 hour, difficulty sharing documents wastes 1 hour, distribution & storage wastes 1 hour, and archiving and retrieval wastes half an hour. The average employee spends 400 hours per year searching for paper documents. - Datapro/Gartner Group
• 30% productivity increase common for simple workflow enabled document management. Staff savings are primarily clerical. - Workflow Management Coalition

Contact us to request a quote for your secure document storage needs.

Effective document management saves money

In addition to the wasted time, poor and outdated document management can directly waste money. Again, during the day-to-day operations, it may seem minor, but a few cents wasted can add up quickly over time.

• The average company spends $20 in labor to file a document, $120 in labor to find a misfiled document, and $220 to reproduce a lost document. Meanwhile, companies lose one out of every 20 documents, and spend 25 hours recreating each lost document. – PricewaterhouseCoopers
• It costs $25,000 per year to fill a four drawer cabinet, and $2,160 per year to maintain. - Orfal, Harkey & Edwards in Essential Client/Server Survival Guide
• U.S. businesses spend $350 billion on computer printouts annually. Paper copies cost between 6 and 12 cents per page (though 130 billion of the 350 billion copies per year are not needed). - Orfal, Harkey & Edwards in Essential Client/Server Survival Guide
• U.S.-based companies spend $25 to $35 billion processing (filing, storing, and retrieving) paper. Management of documents over their life cycle pushes that figure up to $100 billion per year. – IDC

Effective document management helps the environment

Beyond the concrete effect on crucial business resources like time and money, ineffective and inefficient document management can have a huge tangible impact on our natural resources as well. With nearly every business looking for realistic ways to “go green” and reduce their environmental impact, document management is a great place to start.

• The average office worker maintains 20,000 pieces of paper annually. - Coopers & Lybrand
• 95% of corporate information exists on paper. It is estimated that the average worker prints out 45 sheets of paper per day. – IDC
• In spite of reports to the contrary, paper use is huge and continues to grow. Each day, U.S. workers generate 2.7 billion new sheets of paper. - ATG & Rheinner, Reuters
• There are over 4 trillion paper documents in the U.S., and this number is growing at 22% per year. - Coopers & Lybrand

If you’re looking for an effective way to save valuable time, money, and reduce your company's impact on the environment, we encourage you to review your current system. Is it working? It might be time to implement a modern, functional document management program that includes document storage, secure shredding, document scanning, and retention scheduling. For more information, contact our records management company today. 

Stats via www.naviant.com.