Almost any piece of paper that goes through your business may be a target for discovery in a legal suit — and it’s getting harder to figure out which seemingly routine papers you can safely toss.

Most companies now have some system for archiving electronic documents, including email, at least to some extent. But paper documents are often dumped into file folders or boxes that rarely see the light of day again — most companies have shelves, even rooms, groaning with such records.

We talked to Karen Cummings, executive vice president for Sales & Marketing at document software provider Omtool about the ways in which companies leave themselves open by a casual attitude to document management. Omtool sells products like AccuRoute and ObjectArchive that are aimed helping solve such problems.

Q: What is the main legal aspect of document management that most companies miss?

A: If your company gets into a lawsuit, there’s a good chance that there will be some kind of discovery process, where you will be asked to produce all relevant documents relating to the issues in question. In recent years, courts have allowed plaintiffs to make major demands on companies with so-called “fishing expeditions.” And it’s not just Fortune 100 companies that have this problem.

It’s really important that corporate documents be readily and speedily retrievable. That’s a good reason why all your paper documents should be in electronic form and in searchable format, whether searchable PDF, text, or Word. The way to do this is by setting up procedures for identifying important documents and converting them into searchable electronic format, using scanners or multifunctionals with a software product like those Omtool offers, which will help you convert, direct, and save the documents. Depending on the size of your firm and the paper you generate, you may then want to add a high-end document management system, such as Documentum or SharePoint.

Q: How do I prove that I haven’t altered or hidden key documents?

A: There should be documented set of procedures, and proof that it is regularly used in an orderly and predictable manner. You need to show that the untampered-with “original instance” of each document is what’s available.

The next step involves keeping records of who handles and has access to documents, including paper documents. That means controlling workflow. Users should be logged in when they use a copier, multifunctional, or scanner, just like they are logged into a PC More and more copier-multifunctionals let you ask users to log in with a password or authenticate using an access card. Combined with the right software, this can let you know who is accessing which documents, who is archiving them, and who is copying, printing, or emailing them.

Faxing is a special issue. Companies are more and more turning away from using standard standalone faxes, which are hard to control access to and log activity from. Scan-to-email, properly logged in, is one solution. Network fax, where incoming faxes are routed to email and where documents like Word files are send via fax lines from the desktop is another trackable solution.

Q: Is it worth the trouble and money to put these steps in place?

A: Discovery can be a major time and money sink, even if the discovery turns up nothing to help the plaintiff. Assigning personnel from your company means that they stop doing whatever else they are doing — and searching through (confidential) files is not something you want to entrust to casual employees, who might not even know what they are looking for. Having junior attorneys or paralegals from your law firm do the discovery is certain to be even more expensive.

Furthermore, the possibility of major fines for having missing and inaccessible documents can be substantial. That can put the company in jeopardy of fines or lost lawsuits. For most companies, the payoff in setting up clear digital conversion and archiving systems is worth the effort, simply to reduce risk and costly catch-up.

Improving workflow — for many people it’s something between a dream and a nightmare. The very words conjure up visions of lost IT time, messy upgrades and lots of training. That might be fine in a big company, but not for smaller businesses, right?

Not necessarily.

Most companies know that they have to move at some point from paper to digital, that the long-term benefits are real and the risk of falling behind the competition are certain. But how to get started?

The key is that you don’t have to go paperless immediately. We talked with Bill Brikiatis, director of Corporate Marketing at software company eCopy, about how the easy steps small- and mid-size businesses can make to switch to digital document archiving and management:

1. The power of searchable PDF

Most companies create plenty of paperwork, whether for proposals, invoices, spreadsheets, contracts, legal documents or reports. They also need to re-find this information so they can review what they have done, or so they can base the next proposal, contract, or report on an earlier one. The problem, then, becomes where to look. That’s especially the case when you want take a document intended for one client and repurpose it for another.

Many companies have tried scanning the pages to create images, and then indexing them by client ID, invoice number or other information. It’s a time-consuming prospect, and it doesn’t help you when you want to find anything that hasn’t been indexed, such as specific language in a contract or a specific delivery address.

The easiest solution to the problem is scanning to a file format called searchable PDF. This allows you to create industry-standard, universally readable PDF-files, which are small in size and can include such things as signatures, handwritten notes and original fonts, along with searchable text, so that you can enter something like “warranty” and find all documents with that phrase.

The best part is you don’t have to spend time indexing the documents. You need special, but inexpensive, software to create searchable PDFs from scans, software that uses high-quality OCR to create searchable files. To start out, for example, you can get eCopy Desktop for about $200. You can create the files directly from scanned paper documents, a task that can be performed by almost anyone on staff, as it does not require elaborate training or special equipment. The scanning can be done on an office copier or an inexpensive desktop scanner.

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