Records Management Firms: Boost Competitive Edge by Offering Document Restoration Services

Records management companies can gain a competitive advantage and long-term stability by offering document restoration services. Traditionally, records management firms classify, secure and store documents. In addition, records management includes the end of a document’s lifecycle, when it is ready to be destroyed in a secure manner. Many companies find it is easier to outsource these tasks to a records management specialist, rather than maintain in-house employees to carry them out.

Historically, how to restore wet documents has not been a question records management firms had to worry about. But as experts in restoring water- damaged documents, we argue that this is a service that can boost record management firms’ competitive edge.

Just as many records management companies now offer scanning and imaging services, it makes good business sense for them to care for clients’ documents that have been impacted by a disaster. It is intuitive that clients would turn to their records management partners for help with water-damaged documents. Every successful records management company has a reputation for carefully tending clients’ files. From a marketing perspective, a records management brand already has cache for all aspects of document management. Adding document restoration to the menu of services brings records management firms new business and increased customer loyalty.

However, because it can take a lifetime to learn how to restore wet documents, and because the technology needed to repair water damaged documents is quite expensive, we recommend subcontracting document recovery to an established expert. A document restoration specialist can act as your subcontracting partner, recovering clients’ files that seem completely lost to fire, smoke or water damage.

[ Photo by: Marcin Wichary, via CC License ]