Faced with cutbacks, many companies are turning to outsourcing providers for help with office services — often to beef up document management.

An increasing number of companies are outsourcing a broad range of services, such as copier/printer management, on-demand printing, records management, off-site storage and fax services.

Here are five reasons to look for a provider with full support for those document capture and routing services, according to Thaddeus Bouchard of IT World:

• Disaster recovery - Having a third party manage your company’s records means you can have the provider make copies of the docs and store them on- and off-site. So if a technical problem or natural disaster occurs at your site, that key information will be safe.
• Content accessibility - For companies with multiple locations, outsourcing document management provides a centralized source for access across all offices.
• Support for diverse document workflows - Outsourcing providers have the resources to allow use of all the different formats users need.
• Smart document tracking - Many providers offer document routing solutions, which help companies – especially those in highly-regulated industries – get a complete audit trail of every document, with time-stamped receipts.
• Increased productivity - The ultimate goal of any outsourcing plan, of course, is to free IT’s time to work on other projects.

Tags: document capture, outsourcing, routing