Document imaging and your disaster recovery plan.A good disaster recovery plan will always include scanning and document imaging.  If there were ever a reason to scan and image your paper based documents its disaster recovery.

Why Include Document Imaging in a Disaster Recovery Template?

There is a myriad of events that can destroy your critical information that is stored on paper. These events include fire, flood, vandalism, terrorist attacks, and natural disasters like hurricanes, tsunami, earthquakes and more. Paper can and often is just as critical to your business’ day to day operations as any other digital information system.

It’s not feasible to make duplicate copies of your paper and store it in two separate locations but, it is cost effective and practical to scan those documents and make multiple digital copies of those files. Once the files are digitized it easy to include those files in your disaster recovery plan.

The Plan

1. Have your back-file of paper scanned by a document imaging service bureau.  
2. Update you scanning on a weekly basis. This will ensure that you never lose more than a weeks worth of paper.
3. Include your new digital databases with any other digital information systems back up plan. (Make copies and store them in separate locations.)
4. Notify customers to minimize panic during a disaster.