10 Ways to Assure Quality in Outsourced Document Management

1. Choose an ISO9001 accredited company
   ISO9001 is one of the few standards that is consistently used across the globe. It is a base quality management system, and indicates that your outsourced document management or offsite document storage partner complies with a whole range of quite stringent internal and external procedures that ultimately aim to ensure customer satisfaction as much as possible.
2. Look for hazard control
   ISO9001 accredited companies will have in place security systems to protect against fire, flood, burglary, and a huge range of other environmental hazards.
3. Look for constant skills upgrading
   As in many other industries, the technologies and methods of using them involved in offsite document storage and outsourced document management are frequently upgraded. Your management or storage facility should keep up with these.
4. Look for cataloguing and indexing as well as storage
   Doing nothing more than shoving your archive boxes out of sight can be a false economy in the long term, as you send boxes back and forth and spend many hours searching for pieces of paper. Cataloguing and indexing makes offsite document storage much more cost-effective, and it should be provided by the same people that are storing your boxes!
5. Choose a company with electronic delivery options
   The single innovation of incorporating scan-on-demand and electronic delivery of records in offsite document storage facilities has made the process sensible and cost-effective for more companies than ever. Imaging on demand is a base service that will reduce your costs substantially in the long term.
6. Choose a company with large-scale imaging capability
   Imaging of your critical and frequently used documents can save massive amounts of time in some businesses! If your outsourced document management company can help your office go paperless, so much the better.
7.  Choose a company with a frequent delivery schedule
   There's a significant chance you'll need a larger batch of documents than can be easily scanned at some point in the future; or you may need the original documents. Your offsite document storage facility should offer fast deliveries on all weekdays, if not weekends also.
8. Online tracking and access systems
   All the leading outsourced document management facilities have online management facilities that allow you to see exactly where a particular records box is at any time, make delivery requests and receive electronic copies of your documents. This simply makes life easier, and it also cuts costs for the storage facility ... and therefore for you!
9. Space to breathe
   Most offsite document storage facilities will have one or more pictures of their facility. Make sure there is an airflow gap at regular intervals - if not, the famous Queensland humidity can compromise the quality of your stored records.
10. Recycling of destroyed documents
    Part of outsourced document management is secure document destruction at necessary intervals. It's quite simple to have documents recycled once they have been completely de-identified ... so make sure your records management partner is a green one!