Excellent information, all of it! You are correct that a good service bureau can take a prospect’s work and complete the project for as little as 1/4 of the prospects estimated expense. Our company, in fact, wants our prospects to have tried scanning and while we sometimes show this with humor, we want our prospects, if doctors, to know that we would never operate on people or diagnose medical issues for their customers, so why do these professionals believe that they can provide the same services as us? MFP sales people are great in our profession. No longer to do we need to sell the idea of scanning, but again, is a nurse over a copier/scanner/printer the best use of her time in an physician’s office? Would she not stand to generate far more revenue for a doctor than she would scanning, which costs the office lost revenue? Plus most doctors, who think that scanning is scanning, would rather scan using the “standard features”, than research that OCR of a document means you can find something later when looking for it, and scan items to produce garbage in = garbage out. Re-OCR of images is a great business for us as well, because once the paper is shred, as HIPAA mandated, you need to be able to find what you need, when you need it, especially if a lawyer or CMS agent has requested it.

There are countless other stories and ideas, but you have hit the nail on the head. Keep up the great writings!

Jack Bobeck
Jacksonville, FL

I do not see the changes you describe as a technology shift, but rather a change in the way information is stored and managed. Computers have made our lives easier and changed how we read information to how we wash our clothes. So why not change how information is stored? I see the cloud as a the new box. We still use paper, we will always use paper, but less of it and more of the cloud. I too am concerned that use of information on a handheld will change us and our culture, it has in that our young people read less and socialize of Facebook. Today, information may be stolen with a few key clicks, far different than having to read and search papers in a box. Yes, technology has made our lives better, we live longer, but we are all a bit more fragile for we are all easier to find and change based on information at our finger tips.

Who knows, maybe we will see a revolt and return to the days of paper. That would make all of us who store paper, very happy!

Take care,
Jack Bobeck

In the second paragraph I was trying to make the point that someone in a company can get one of the free or inexpenive cloud-based collaboration sites and conduct company business on that site. The company may not approve or even know that the site exists and from a records keeping point of view, that is not a good situation.