Recordsforce leads way to world of digital record-keeping

Port City company receives jobs grant

PORTSMOUTH — Despite many futurist pronouncements that the end of the paper-based world is at hand, paper is still with us, even as a greater volume of records, bills and even greeting cards are going digital.

There's an interesting trend in the latest evolutionary step from paper to digital record-keeping. For document scanning and management companies such as Portsmouth-based Recordsforce, more businesses in every sector of the economy are moving to a so-called front-end solution.

"This bigger trend is to push digital scanning to the beginning of the process is a recent and growing service," said Michael Dailey, vice president and chief marketing officer for Recordsforce. This entails Recordsforce handling documents such as invoices before they reach the clients via post office boxes managed by Recordsforce. It quickly scans the document at its production facilities in Portsmouth or Louisville, Ky., and sends it to the client in digital form, where it can be passed.

Dailey said the mailroom outsourcing option is fast replacing the older paper-centric, "post-processing" system of having a paper invoice passed between departments and then having it digitized after handling.

"We do the data extraction at the beginning and it's cost effective, saving time and money," he explained. "Our goal is to help (clients') get rid of their paper."

Founded in 2001 by Bill and Katja Becker, Recordsforce estimates it has copied and digitally transferred more than 100 million documents, with the count rising every day. It offers a wide range of document scanning and management services and employs between 25 and 40 employees at any time, many of them trained specialists in using the software that best suits a particular project.

Keeping up with new and emerging technologies is a must in the very competitive document scanning and digital management industry. Last month, Recordsforce acquired AnyDoc automated data capture software to fully empower a pair of its top solutions — Accounts Payable Automation and Explanation of Benefits Automation.

"Acquiring a system such as AnyDoc requires tremendous up-front investment and an incredibly steep learning curve, making it difficult to cost-justify all but the highest volumes of records," said Bill Becker, company president and chief executive officer. "Offered as a business process outsourcing solution by Recordsforce, businesses of all sizes can leverage the power of such an application that would otherwise be reserved for only the largest of organizations."

Recordsforce received a state job training grant last month. Dailey said the $6,000 grant was matched at $6,400 by the company to help train a worker in a new software application that will help Recordsforce expand its capabilities.

"The grant is a fantastic thing, and we are pleased to be able to take advantage of this type of help that allows us to save money and helps our bottom line by keeping costs down," he said.

Dailey, who joined the company in 2002 and is a minority owner, said his company has a number of regular, high-profile clients and many "one-off projects."

"We handle Fortune 100 companies and the corner grocery store," Dailey said.

Staples has been one of the biggest, and the company works with the Boston Celtics. A majority of its clients are in New England and the Midwest, but the company is developing a wider national client base.

Earlier this year, Recordsforce completed a major archival project of scanning and managing 50 years of weekly issues of The Anchor, a Catholic newspaper in Fall River, Mass. The quality and types of the paper editions were handled with care and transferred into text-searchable PDF documents.

Dailey said the company has maintained its long-standing priority of educating clients and the greater business community about the importance of digitization, compliance requirements and proper document management.

"The irony is that, even when people try to go digital and get an invoice or document digitally by e-mail, they print it out and pass it around," he said.

Recordsforce sometimes is called into situations with decades of paperwork sitting around, but not all needs to be digitized and a shredder is needed more.

Dailey declined to disclose revenue figures for the privately held company, but said it was in the more-than-seven-figures range annually. Recordsforce has also seen a rise in businesses since the recession of 2008 as more companies embrace a "do more with less" ethos that includes better document management, he said.

The company has a "practices what it preaches" mentality when it comes to digitizing its in-house work, and Dailey cited himself as an example. "I was more than willing to give up my filing cabinet in 2002, and haven't missed it," he said.

Reproduced with permissions from http://www.seacoastonline.com/articles/20111002-BIZ-110020313?cid=sitesearch