PRISM has announced a new certification for privacy for document scanning and records storage companies. The Privacy Plus certification is self-administered and incorporates the best industry standards for security and privacy. There are three areas to the certification including physical, administrative and technology. Meeting the certification requirements would also equal certification for HIPAA, Gramm Leach Bliley, PCI Data Security Standard, FACTA, and Sarbanes Oxley.

This is a fantastic idea for PRISM. There is currently no industry standards for maintaining privacy. It is very difficult for businesses to know if they are using a records management that meets legal requirements. This give them the confidence that they have chosen someone that will not introduce problems later.

A change that would be good to add would be an external auditor. That would add a second verification that would confirm what the checklist found.

Portable Document Format (PDF) causes a great deal of confusion for many of our document scanning customers. The format was developed by Adobe Systems to be independent of hardware or software. At the time that it was created, 1993, it was difficult to read documents across multiple platforms without converting it. While most people today don't like to remember those days or never experienced them it lives in the legacy of PDFs. In 1998, Adobe made the specification open source.

There are many formats of PDFs but we will put them in three buckets for simplicity. There are also specifications that add text links and vector imaging that we will not discuss.

The most basic is just a PDF Image. This is best described as a picture of the document stored in a PDF format. There will still be index fields on the file but you will not be able to do a keyword search of the document. This is the least expensive option for a document conversion project.

The next step up is commonly referred to as Searchable PDF. When the document is opened it will still look like a picture of the original document. The difference is that Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software has be run on the document. The text is hidden but can still be searched by keyword. The original document can not be altered without specialized software.

The last step is if you convert to a PDF formatted Text and Graphics file. The original document is replaced but its text equivalent. This is good for working documents but obviously is not the right solution to store legal documents. The file size is actually very small for this type of file.

The conversion to paperless processes have changed the way that business is done. This is not just with internal  processes but also how businesses interact with their vendors and clients. Florence de Borja has published an article on Cloud Tweaks about how things are being done by accountants.

Software is making it easier for companies to handle their bookkeeping internally. Large accounting firms are starting to move down the market to make up for lost revenue from their large clients. These two sides are pinching small and medium sized CPA firms.

But by implementing new ways of doing business these CPA firms can create whole new services. By having clients use document scanning for invoices and other financial documents the accountant and business have real time access to accounting data. The CPA can offer more timely advice than once a month. They can also spot small problems before they become big ones.

Better records management means better service for the client and more revenue for the accounting firms. And everyone likes a win-win.

A year after a snowstorm collapsed the roof of their facility, Infoshred is celebrating the opening of a new 50,000 sqft facility. The new facility is state of the art with an emphasis on improved roofing. It will now withstand forty pounds per square foot which is ten pounds heavier than building codes require. There is also a permanent ladder for emergency snow removal. Lastly, the gutters and downspouts are heated to prevent them from blocking up.

The will continue to offer off-site shredding and records storage at the new facility. Congratulations to Infoshred and I think it is safe to say they are better prepared for the snow than any other records storage company I have ever visited.

Diversified Information Technologies (DIT) has purchased a 166,000 sqft building in Enfield Connecticut. The building was used as an envelope plant by the prior owners. DIT plans to use the facility for its records storage operations.

DIT is another company looking to expand to a national footprint. They are planning on opening records storage facilities in Columbia, Minneapolis, and Portland. These new national players are going to give the big incumbents a run for their money. They have the size to serve companies nationally but are not so big to be slow to react to customers.

Archive Systems has announced the purchase of Professional Records Management of Atlanta, Georgia. Professional Records Management focused on records storage services to the Atlanta metropolitan area. The acquisition expands the footprint of Archive Systems into Georgia. They currently offer service in New York, DC, Phoenix, Portland and Seattle.

Archive Systems plans to keep all of the former employees of Professional Records Management. Larry Corley, former owner, will stay on in the role of General Manager. Financial details of the sale were not disclosed.

One of the things that seem to confuse people about document scanning is dpi. This is an abbreviation for dots per inch.So it is how many measurements the scanner will make for every inch of the document. So the greater the dpi the finer grained the resulting digital image.

For black and white images it will either be measured as black or white so it is one bit per dot. For color images there are 48 bits per dot. So the size of the resulting digital image is a function of how many dpi and if it is color or black and white.

Now you know what dpi you might think that higher is better. But this is not always the case. So what is a good dpi for your document scanning project? The most common for standard office documents is 200dpi. That is sharp enough to be used read or re-printed. It is also good enough for OCR software. Consider for a second that back when we used to fax documents we were using 75dpi and they are readable and used as legal documents.

There are people who are convinced that 300dpi (or even greater) is a requirement. There is no doubt that it will achieve a "smoother" looking document. But the same result with software that every scanning service uses. Higher resolution scanning can also pick up dots in the original. This can be distracting and then the digital images need to be "cleaned" with the same software package that could have smoothed out the 200dpi scan.

The other thing to consider is the size of the digital image. A 300dpi is not 33% larger than a 200dpi one, it is over 500% larger. With a reasonable sized project that can result is significant increases in digital storage and backup required.

Perhaps the most important thing to consider is cost. It takes three times longer to scan at 300dpi than 200dpi. This either will cost you time to run them all through or increase the cost of the job if you have it outsourced.

So before you let someone talk you into a higher resolution consider why you really need it. We can scan at any dpi you specify but the cost to do the work and the cost to store the electronic records will change accordingly.