Document Scanning & Digitization
Throughout the years, the oil and gas industry has experienced substantial growth throughout the United States. This expansion includes oil and gas exploration and extending pipeline services. If your company is part of this growth, now is the time to consider scanning your document storage.
The energy industry faces some of the most comprehensive regulations than any other sector in the world. Maintaining compliance involves storing tens of thousands of documents. Handling these documents involves physically storing them, scanning them, or destroying them according to strict record retention schedules. That’s where digital document storage is beneficial to the energy industry.
The energy industry faces challenges when storing documents for a lengthy timeframe. These challenges include deterioration, misplacement, and retrieval issues. Oil and gas companies can save millions by re-purposing their document storage space and implementing a digital recordkeeping system.
Understanding Oil & Gas Document Scanning Services
Physically storing documents involves incurring many costs. Companies have to pay for the paper and ink when printing these documents. They also have to dedicate a space within their facility for document storage. Once documents reach the end of their lifecycle, there’s also the cost of destroying them. If documents are misplaced or accidentally destroyed, companies face costs regarding their replacements and potential fines.
Digital document storage doesn’t include these types of challenges or costs. Instead, incorporating scanning services into the company’s storage solution increases efficiency and mobility while simultaneously reducing physical storage space.
Oil and gas onsite and backfile document scanning services are ideal for any document, including:
- Active documents
- Contracts
- Geological data
- Human resources documents
- Legacy data
- Log files
- Maintenance records
- Royalty agreements
- Tax and accounting documents
- Workers’ compensation documents
Why Oil & Gas Facilities Should Use Scanning Services
Oil and gas facilities are under constant pressure to innovate while reducing costs. Many companies within the energy industry are implementing scanning services as a document storage solution. Oil and gas companies can turn to digital technologies to remain competitive and innovative while simultaneously improving efficiency and productivity.
The oil and gas sector goes through a host of complex phases. Each phase contains separate volumes of documentation and information. Unfortunately, this information is typically convoluted and disorganized. No matter the task, whether it’s building refineries or preparing proposals, companies need control over these mission-critical processes. An ideal solution is incorporating onsite document scanning as a document storage solution.
Remaining competitive in the energy industry while mitigating risk means having quick access to document storage. Document scanning captures, secures, distributes, and manages data. Here are some additional reasons why oil and gas facilities should incorporate scanning services as a storage solution:
- Accountability: Federal and state agencies hold gas and oil companies accountable for having accessible records. The energy sector produces a never-ending paper trail. That could include applications, disclosures, inventory logs, planning documents, reports, and more. Oil and gas companies can’t afford to be careless when handling their records.
- Cost control: Keeping digitally archived data helps companies establish trends, inform business intelligence, and reduce overhead costs. As a result, that also prevents costly downtime. Using scanning services helps oil and gas companies utilize big data solutions to promote cost-efficiency and safety.
- Investments: Oil and gas companies need to keep their data archives organized to acquire and sell more investments strategically. Many energy companies frequently buy and sell investments. That company’s data is the driving force behind those sales. Records management professionals should be able to analyze, export, and query asset information from any location at any time.
- Protected record retention: It isn’t uncommon for oil and gas companies to retain records between 30 and 40 years. It also isn’t uncommon for contracts to include hundreds of pages of documentation. Over the years, these pages are subject to deterioration or misplacement. Companies can keep these documents at their fingertips when digitizing them.
All document storage is in one centralized location, making this information easy to access by anyone in the company. Every team member knows where to find this information for accessing or updating as needed.
How Scanning Services Improve Efficiency
Energy companies are continually looking for ways to increase productivity and efficiency as cost-reduction measures. Document management plays a critical role in these goals. Many oil and gas companies experience significant losses in employee productivity and efficiency due to paper-based document challenges.
Incorporating a high-quality digital scanning system is beneficial to those in the energy industry for many reasons, including improving efficiency. For example, after completing a contract, companies can scan this information and convert it to text. Scanning services index these documents, which means every document is accessible using search words or phrases. That improves efficiency significantly because team members don’t physically search for and pull from paper document storage.
Aside from contracts or legal document scanning, backfile scanning can also include accounting and tax records. Efficient data accessibility is critical for maximizing profitability in this rapidly changing industry. That efficiency improves when team members no longer have to spend time digging through files whenever they need to retrieve critical information.
Digital documents also enable project teams to share critical business information or records easily and with more collaboration. Transferring documents to clients or other external parties are also much more efficient thanks to digital document storage. This increase in efficiency is particularly beneficial to companies with large client bases or team members working in multiple locations.
Benefits and Features of Scanning Services
In today’s business climate, document management professionals face many challenges regarding accessing and retaining document storage. Due to its variety of moving pieces, it’s difficult to tell what’s in archives and its precise location. That’s where the benefit of scanning services come into play. Not only are critical documents easily accessible, but they’re also secure, and there’s no risk of misplacing them.
Additional benefits include:
- Easy access to document storage no matter the team member’s location
- Instant retrieval helps speed up business practices.
- A running log of all documents, including when they are accessed.
- Managers can restrict access permissions to specific users, including emailing and printing.
Scanning services employ image scanners to create digital storage. Scanning often includes running documents through a feeder to capture these images. Even though scanning is primarily a machine-based project, companies must work toward preparing documents. This preparation includes inspecting documents manually to ensure staples, folds, and other things that could cause a paper jam aren’t present.
Additional features include:
- Batch scanning
- Indexing for quick search and access capabilities
- PDF conversions
- Secure storage
Technical Specifications and Design
As the energy industry continues to expand, so is the need for better document storage solutions. It isn’t uncommon for oil and gas companies to turn to an in-house engineering team for document storage needs. Architects and engineers provide innovative storage solutions to the athletic, educational, medical, legal, and military sectors.
General Specifications for Scanning Services:
- Access control
- Accountability
- Compliance regulation
- Cost reduction
- Improved content management solutions
- Increases in productivity
- Reduction of retrieval times
Maximizing Floorspace with Digital Storage Solutions
Since energy industry facilities have to retain information for a long period of time, these facilities often face document storage challenges. Implementation of scanning services means that these facilities are reducing or eliminating wasted document storage space.
The technical specifications and design features for the scanners we use include the following:
- A high-speed production-class scanner
- Scanning services for up to 50,000 documents per eight-hour shift
- Front and back scanning either in black and white or color
- 300 DPI standard resolution
- Higher resolution scanning is available upon request
- Scanning of large format documents, including blueprint drawings, engineering plans, and more
With expert scanning professionals onsite, it’s possible to integrate these document storage solutions with existing quality control measures. Typically, a scanning house only dedicates 20% to quality control. However, our scanning services include 100% quality control to ensure every document is digitized at the highest quality.
Contact Us for Scanning Services for Oil & Gas Companies
Southwest Solutions provides innovative solutions for oil & gas companies needing scanning services for their document storage. To speak to one of our document scanning specialists, call us at 1-800-803-1083 or send us a message today. They’ll help you determine the best approach for preparing for and indexing your company’s document storage.
Still have questions? Check out our document scanning services FAQ.