While accounting firms have taken advantage of the cost-saving benefits that computer networks offer, between 85% and 90% of important information is not accessible through these networks because it resides in paper format. Inherent in these paper-based systems are wasted man-hours spent filing, searching, retrieving, and re-filing documents.

In a business atmosphere, where accounting firms are looking for ways to cut cost and increase productivity, a need exists to replace obsolete paper filing system with a document imaging system to gain the benefits inherent in electronic documents. The time saved retrieving electronic documents is enormous.

Due to the constant influx of multiple office personnel circulating through a paper-based filing system to retrieve and return documents, instead of a single dedicated person, we seldom analyze the cost of our paper-based filing system. It is an eye-opening experience when one does investigate this cost.

With efficiency studies showing that it takes 6 minutes to find and re-file a document in a highly efficient filing system, let's analyze the cost to find and file 200 important paper documents per day. 200 documents x 6 minutes each = 1,200 minutes daily / 60 minutes per hour = 20 hours x $15 per hour (including SS and benefits) = $300 per day x 260 days per year = $78,000 per year.

In the previous example, we used a highly efficient filing system. However, in a paper-based filing system, documents often cannot be found. According to a study by Cooper & Lybrand, one out of every ten documents is a problem; sitting on someones desk, misfiled, removed from the office, of simply requires more time to find. This dramatically increases the costs involved in using a paper filing system, and decreases the overall efficiency of the firm. With our document imaging system, lost and misplaced documents are a thing of the past.