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Benefits of Outsourcing Imaging Services to Accelerated Imaging

Today, business is more competitive than ever.  The need to provide employees with the best tools to do business in a financially limited environment is a constant challenge.  The debate over “going in-house” versus  “outsourcing” has run on for years with companies doing one or the other or both.  We at Accelerated Imaging believe that outsourcing can provide sweeping benefits both immediately and over the long term.  By utilizing our services you will enjoy all of the benefits of a local service bureau including: 

Technology Migration:

Anytime a company invests in hardware and software to solve an internal infrastructure issue, it stakes its claim in time.  Your sister imaging system at the home office was purchased several years ago, and already some of the key components of its architecture can be considered outdated.  In another three years, all of the equipment purchased for your imaging department may need to be replaced or upgraded.  When comparing how that reinvestment affects you cost per image compared to the same migration by a service bureau, the affect is obvious.  A service bureau not only justifies upgrades more easily, but also has a requirement to stay current with technology to support the growth of new clients.  An internal operation has no pressure to stay current with technology and a negative incentive to re-invest in hardware.  The result, in-house operations struggle over time with solutions that are supported less and less and with hardware that becomes less and less reliable to the point of failure.  The way this affects the end user is obvious.  A declining quality of experience with the solution that reduces the value of the service provided. 

Cross Training and Career Path:

In any big company there is usually an opportunity for entry level employees to move up the corporate ladder.  The same goes for in-house imaging opportunities.  As a business support unit, employees in this area are not typically in career positions, as say, a scanner operator or an indexing clerk at Accelerated Imaging is.  The results are clear, your best employees are hired out of the imaging department as the staff that accumulates in the in-house department are those who could find no better opportunity in the company.  In other words, the weakest performers continue to work in the support department while high performers are promoted to value added positions in the company.  The opportunities for cross training in an in-house imaging operation are also limited.  Without a clear imaging career path, the exercise in cross training has limited results.  Within a service bureau, the companies mission is directly in-line with the work performed each day.  Therefore, the service bureau employee has motivation and incentive to improve their skill set within their industry, making them better operators and more efficient employees.   

Reworks:

In-house, every mistake made in the imaging process costs your company money in added labor and increasing backlogs. When you use a service bureau, the same opportunities for mistake exists, but now it is not your financial concern. A company that you have hired must deal with the headaches and issues caused by equipment failure or employee error. However, because our employees have an average of more than 5 years experience with document conversion, our rework rates are very low, making us more competitive than an in-house department over time. 

On-going Training:

Our employees are learning new techniques and strategies for document management as we build better solutions for our clients.  The need to keep up with technology extends beyond our hardware and software upgrades, it also includes our key people and our scanning and data entry operators.  By working closely with our operations staff we can provide procedures and methods for a clients which continue to make them more efficient and more productive than they were in their in-house environment. 

Scheduling:

Within most corporate structures, the flexibility of scheduling is already reduced somewhat.  With a small in-house operation, you options are even more limited.  With only two workstations used for capture and data entry, your ability to alter workflow and focus effort on a problem area only result in work piling up in some other area.  With a service bureau we bring the abilities of a dozen in-house operations to bear on our needs for our clients.  If you need a big project done ASAP, we have the ability to schedule our entire staff on your project for a period of time, creating enormous opportunities for quick turnaround and backlog management that just do not exist for the in-house department. 

Production Spikes:

As an example of the benefits of using a service bureau, the production spike is perfect. The in-house operation can be up to date with its work and then get overwhelmed by a single acquisition or discover a backlog of work that was hidden in storage.  These events inevitably lead to backlog and management headaches trying to unravel a big project while at the same time supporting the on-going work.  Without additional resources the in-house manager is trapped with either falling behind or getting extra help.   Our service bureau is already prepared for the fire drill of a big project.  We have the additional equipment and employees who have the flexibility and cross training to get the job done, without any additional cost or headaches to your company as a client of ours. 

Management Issues:

By now you have realized that document imaging, despite its technical capabilities, is still a laborious process.  Accelerated Imaging has been managing this labor process for years.  We know about employees calling in sick, the difficulty in finding good temps, the increasing expenses of hiring qualified employees.  We also know about equipment failure, drive crashes, network outages, you name it.  I also know that nearly every in-house imaging manager faces these issues on a regular basis.  It takes a lot of time and effort to manage people.  We take that burden off of the company and create accountability at the same time.  No more calls to maintenance.  No more wondering about how to get those 7,500 files done by next Monday.  We are the solution to your information management headaches. 

Downtime and Re-investment:

Although discussed in Technology Migration, it is important to remember, once you outsource scanning, your need to be concerned with downtime and equipment failure is reduced significantly.  With your document volumes and number of users, that has to be a benefit to the company.  The comfort of knowing the system will continue to run, unimpeded and without additional investment or replacement costs. 

Illusion of Control:

Many companies stay in-house because they want to be in control.  I think this is an illusion for many reasons.  First, some of your lowest paid employees are gaining access to the company’s most important information.  Be it human resources or customers financial data, companies are exposing highly confidential information to people who have a higher turnover rate and lower average income than most company employees.  So, from a confidentiality perspective, the disinterested third party, the service bureau, has a much lower incentive to misuse the information provided for conversion than the in-house employee.  This results in either some records being excluded from document imaging or, sensitive information being leaked from document management.  In either case, you are being controlled by the in-house nature of scanning, not gaining control by doing it yourself.  Another illusion of control is the idea that a service bureau may not be as accountable as an in-house department.  This can be addressed simply.  First, you can much more easily fire your service bureau than you can your imaging department.  We know that. You know that.  As long as a service bureau is held accountable for the results of its work, the quality of the service bureaus scanned images will maintain their integrity, while an in-house operation watches quality and efficiency slowly decline over time. 

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