ScanBox Document Management Services, Inc.

ScanBox was founded in 2017 to fill the gap left by the demise of Vital Records Center.  Very early in the founding of ScanBox, the principles reviewed the current legal environment and state of technology.  From that exploration, they decided to expand their horizon beyond document scanning and push toward the entire process of Records Retention.

The CFO/CIO engaged in business process re-engineering throughout his 35-year career consulting in Enterprise Requirement Planning.  It was his observations that most organizations follow a records retention process that concentrates on paper.  These processes, policies, and procedures were, most likely, established prior to the advent of relatively low-cost scanning technology.  With this supposition in mind, the three principals talked with various contacts they had made and found that this was generally true.

The current state of scanning technology, database technology and admissibility of a digitized document in a court of law warranted a fresh look at Records Retention.  This new paradigm concentrates on understanding Federal and State regulations for records retention and taking into account industry organization guidelines to put records archives online in such a manner as to assure authenticity of the documents, timely purging of document past their retention period, reducing the total cost of retention and making the archive available to those authorized to search through it.

Thus, ScanBox was formed.  Let us begin by telling you what we aren’t.  ScanBox is not a typical document management company.  We do not just come in and merely scan or store documents.  We will discourage you from simply packing up your boxes and sending them to us for scanning.  We are not a company who leaves you with an open-ended records retention solution and the associated risk.

Let me tell you one of our core values.  Providing employment to Veterans, Service-Disabled Veterans, and those living with disabilities.  These communities find it harder than most to secure employment.  One of our taglines is “Serving those who served us” and we mean it.

ScanBox begins with an analysis of the origin of your documents and who should have access to them throughout their lifecycle.  We then work with you to re-engineer existing records retention processes and develop educational material; the best records retention program in the world will not work if personnel are not aware of the requirements of records retention and the role they play in the life of documents.

Effective business processes, compliance, trained employees and proper storage/retrieval/purging are the keys to developing a comprehensive and proper Records Retention Program that reduces costs and reduces litigation risk.

At the center of all our offerings that involve scanning is the mandate that we provide you with document images that are legible and can stand up to their authenticity being challenged in a court of law. Our Chain of Custody (CoC) Process includes steps to ensure image authenticity meets that mandate.

Document Scanning (Core Business)

At the core to our vision of records retention is documented digitization. Each job for a customer is covered by a separate Statement of Work (SOW) that describes such things as how the documents are to be processed, the level of granularity required, File Naming Convention, box disposition after scanning, as well as other pertinent factors. Boxes of documents are carefully prepped for scanning and reassembled after scanning per the SOW and returned or disposed of per the SOW. The CoC process records every event that happens to a document from the time it comes into our possession to the time it leaves our possession.

Document Preparation for loading into a Document Management System (DMS)

Preparation of digitized documents for loading into a DMS goes beyond scanning. Attributization of the documents with such information as type of document, date of the document, customer number, product number, etc. are important to enhance the functionality of the DMS. Proper atrributization is the key to making the DMS searchable, provides a basis for effective purging of documents past their retention period, and makes the DMS database easily searchable. Scan has the software and techniques to deliver attributed documents back to you in a variety of ways.

Microfilm & Micro Fiche Conversion

As we move forward towards a more digital & technologically advanced society, microfilm has become obsolete. Microfilm was the go-to way to archive documents dating back past the 1970’s. As we have advanced in society, technology has provided more efficient means to solving the archiving equation. Ask yourself, what good is my microfilm if I have no way to view the data on the film? Viewing equipment for microfilm is hard to find, unreliable, and very inefficient. ScanBox has the ability to convert your microfilm & microfiche and treat it as any other document, making it more time efficient to find your data. Another drawback of microfilm is that it deteriorates over time. Once the film has deteriorated past the point of no return, your information is lost forever.

Book Scanning

We have all reached a point in our lives when we have gone to look up records dating back into the 1800’s. We are all familiar with the big, hardbound books that we find at our county deed offices. ScanBox has the equipment and knowledge to properly and safely convert this information into a digital archive. It is imperative that this information is archived in a manner that will ensure this information is around for a long time so that we can properly trace possession of the property. Many of these books and other historical documents are too brittle to send through a typical document scanner. ScanBox possesses the equipment to scan this information with a very “hands-off” approach.

Records Retention Consulting (Core Business)

In a small survey, we found that many organizations have a records retention policy that revolves around taking a paper document and sticking it in a box, then sending said box to a third-party company in which they pay the third party to hold their information hostage. Some of the people in these companies do not even know what they are putting into these storage boxes, nor how long they should keep the information in the box. In one extreme case, an organization was keeping thousands of a certain type of document that they did not need to keep at all, simply because it was easier for the legal department. ScanBox offers consulting services in which we will work with your organization to ensure that you have the proper records retention policies and procedures in place as required by the state, federal, and industry guidelines. This service is an end to end service in which we look at your current policies and procedures, identifying deficiencies and gaps. From there we create custom solutions specifically tailored to the aforementioned guidelines.