Though we have been hearing about the paperless office for quite some time now, it is yet to become a reality. You have to deal with a lot of paper documents even today. There are paper contracts and other legal documents that you wouldn’t want to shred, even if copies of these are available in digital format.

Then there are the old documents which you might not consider worth transferring to a digital repository. These paper documents cannot yet be disposed off owing to statutory or other reasons.

Most large offices are still likely to have a significant volume of paper documents. Where can you store these documents? You have three broad options: in-house storage, self storage and professional third party document storage. Let us look at these options.

In House Document Storage

You can use the traditional paper folder and filing cabinet options to store the paper documents. Being in house, you can access the documents at any time and you also don’t incur any costs for transporting the documents to and from and outside storage facility. For confidential documents you might not consider any other option.

However, in house storage can cost significant amounts of money. You need expensive floor space to accommodate all the equipment and you need dedicated staff to sort, file, retrieve, and otherwise handle the paper documents.

It can also happen that in the absence of the person who has stored a particular document, that document cannot be located.

Using a Self Storage Facility

A self storage facility allows you to keep your documents in a less expensive location, under your lock and key. You can restrict access to this facility to authorized persons, thus improving security. This can save expensive office space costs, or free up the office space for more productive purposes.

Self storage facilities differ in the kinds of access and security they provide. You might have to give advance notice to access some facilities. Others might lack any security and only your padlock might be the only barrier between your documents and an intruder. There is also the possibility that the facility adjacent to yours stores flammable materials, endangering your documents.

In addition to paying rent for the storage facility, you also have to incur costs for transporting documents to and fro.

Professional Third Party Document Storage

There are specialist document storage agencies that provide not only storage service but also other incidental services such as document management. They might catalog and index all the documents, transport the documents from and to your office and enable access to the documents even at odd hours.

Being experts in the field of document storage (and possibly management) you can expect better results from these agencies compared to self-storage or even in house storage. For example, they might provide document disposal services, keeping track of documents that need not be maintained any more.

Documents are also likely to be much safer under the specialized document storage facilities these service providers have installed.

The professional document storage option is worth your serious consideration.