By Amy Falkofske
Sponsored by Didlake Document Imaging
Didlake Document Imaging employs people with disabilities and provides a valuable service to businesses and individuals in the Greater Prince William area. Attorneys, real estate associations, non-profits, medical offices, architects and government agencies make up most of Didlake Document Imaging’s clients, according to Steve Furhman, Didlake’s Business Manager.
Document Imaging
Document imaging is the process of digitizing business and personal records. Many companies have records retention requirements, meaning they are “legally required to keep documents for a certain amount of time,” according to Erika Spalding, Didlake’s Vice President of Corporate Communications & Marketing. Digitizing records also frees up office space and keeps your records safe and secure in the case of a fire or flooding. This could mean the difference between going out of business and being able to stay in business after disaster strikes.
How Document Imaging Works
Once a business or individual hires Didlake Document Imaging, their documents will be securely picked up by a secured truck. Once the truck is loaded with your documents, it goes straight to Didlake’s facility at 8472 Kao Circle in Manassas without any stops. The facility is equipped with cameras on the outside, cameras within the facility and motion detectors inside. Didlake’s document imaging facility also has dual climate control and a sprinkler system. “We maintain a safe, clean and well-organized facility,” said Furhman
All of Didlake’s document imaging employees are HIPAA trained.
“We have our own training material where employees get to take quizzes and get certified in the HIPAA requirements, and then they sign confidentiality agreements. The security aspect is very important to us,” said Furhman.
At the Warehouse
Once your documents arrive at the facility, the staff will put bar codes on them and put them in the warehouse. They can also provide the service of inventorying the files and creating a spreadsheet to send to you in case you need to pull a specific file in the future. The files will be indexed to your specifications.
What Happens Next
Didlake’s employees then sit down and remove staples and paperclips and unfold the corners. They will throw out anything that you tell them you don’t need and will put any post-it notes on another piece of paper and scan and digitize your files.
Once that’s done, your files will be uploaded to a cloud or put on a thumb drive or hard drive, depending on how much information there is. Didlake will also review your files with you either in person or on a Zoom call to do a spot check and make sure you’re happy with the quality of your scans.
Secure Document Destruction
Once you sign off on your project, you can either have your documents returned to you, or Didlake will facilitate the destruction of your documents.
“We’ve partnered with a document destruction company. We have the bins located at our facility, and when [the document destruction company]comes to do the destructions Steve or Candie, our supervisor [at Koa Circle) will oversee that destruction. So their documents never leave. Once they come to our facility, they never leave our facility,” said Valerie Spencer, Didlake’s Director of Business Development.
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) Technology
Didlake uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology that makes your document searchable and saves you the expense of having to index all of your documents.
“When we scan, it reads every word, and [the client]just has to hit control F and they can search the document. They don’t have to have all those indexes. We’re problem solvers, and we try to explain [to the client]through the process so they understand it. We … also try to help them save money and do it the fastest way … We try to simplify it for them,” said Furhman.
Digital Mailroom
Another thing that Didlake Document Imaging offers is a digital mailroom. You can outsource your incoming mail processes, which reduces workload and cuts down on human error. Didlake’s digital mailroom management service offers secure, efficient handling of your critical information so you can have immediate, safe and secure access to your corporate mail.
How the Digital Mailroom Works
With a digital mailroom, you can forward your mail to Didlake’s secure facility and assign secure and limited role access to key employees. Didlake will receive, prepare and scan your mail to their secure cloud server (Microsoft Azure). They will do a quality assurance check and then move the mail to an individual assigned document tray (In-Box). You can then access the cloud from any device to retrieve your mail.
Large Print Scans
Because of their contract with the U.S. Coast Guard, Didlake has the ability to scan oversized prints. This includes things like blueprints and engineering drawings. Didlake enabled the Coast Guard to move their entire engineering library over to digital format. This saves a lot of time when certain drawings need to be accessed from the field for equipment repairs.
“We invested in state of the art equipment and honed our expertise in large format scanning to provide a specialized service for significantly less cost than you would get from a standard office supply store,” said Spencer.
For More Information
Didlake Document Imaging serves anyone who has document imaging needs. No job is too small. For a free estimate, visit Didlake Document Imaging’s website.
