Starting your digitization journey: What to scan and why

Deciding where to begin your digitization journey can feel overwhelming. You have years of information stored in filing cabinets, store rooms, and offices, but not all of it needs to be scanned today. The first step is identifying the documents that, once digital, will deliver the most value to your business.

We help you transform your physical information into secure, accessible digital assets–and then make them intelligent by structuring the data and enriching it with metadata using intelligent document processing (IDP). This guide explains why scanning is a critical first step and which documents and media are the best place to start.

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The business challenge

Physical records are more than just a storage expense—they are an operational bottleneck. When critical information remains trapped on paper, it becomes "dark data," invisible to modern analytics and impossible to use in automated workflows. This fragmentation creates a multi-layered impact on your organization:

The business challenge

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Decreased productivity

Teams spend hours or even days searching for physical documents scattered across various locations, diverting focus from high-value activities that drive innovation.

Compliance and security fragility

Physical files are inherently vulnerable to environmental damage, loss, and unauthorized access.

Retention risks

Over-retaining paper records often leads to serious compliance issues, as certain regulations require destruction once records have met their specific retention requirements.

Operational inefficiency

Manual, paper-intensive processes—common in departments like Accounts Payable—often result in bottlenecks, such as late payments to suppliers, which weaken critical business relationships.

Strategic triage: You don't need to digitize everything

A common misconception is that digital transformation requires an immediate, total backlog conversion. In reality, being future-ready means exercising fiscal responsibility through selective modernization.

By using Iron Mountain Smart Suite, our portfolio of technology-enabled services for legacy records, we help you audit your physical inventory to determine what to scan, what to store, and what to defensibly destroy. On average, organizations report that only about 42% of boxes containing paper records actually require digitization.¹ The rest can be securely stored or destroyed depending on your obligations, helping you reclaim costs and stop paying to manage records you no longer need.

How the transformation works

Our process is designed to bridge the gap between your physical and digital assets with a secure, end-to-end chain of custody.

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Identify and assess

We work with you to locate your assets and align your digitization strategy with your specific business goals. Smart Suite then serves as your strategic blueprint to decide what to scan, store, or disposition.

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Secure collection

Our trained specialists and secure, GPS-tracked fleet provide end-to-end logistics and maintain a complete chain of custody from your facility to our secure scanning centers.

Preparation and scanning

We meticulously prepare your documents, removing staples and repairing pages before using high-speed, advanced imaging technology to create high-quality digital copies.

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Data capture and indexing

Using advanced optical character recognition (OCR) and AI, we extract and classify key information—like names, dates, or invoice numbers—to make your newly digitized files fully searchable.

Secure access

Your digitized information is encrypted and delivered to you in your preferred format or hosted in a secure cloud repository, accessible only by your authorized users.

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Secure disposition

After scanning, we can securely destroy the physical copies in a compliant and sustainable manner or return them to you for archival storage.

What can be transformed?

A comprehensive digitization partner can modernize almost any physical asset your organization holds.

Digitizing core operational information provides the most immediate impact on daily efficiency.

Standard paper files: Scanning correspondence, project files, and departmental records makes day-to-day information retrieval instant.
Handwritten documents: Intelligent capture extracts critical data from notes, registration forms, and applications, making previously “unusable”unstructured data functional.
Physical mail: A digital mail solution scans and routes incoming mail to the correct digital workflows, eliminating paper-based bottlenecks from day one.
Human Resources (HR) documents: Employee records, payroll files, and benefits contain highly sensitive information that requires meticulous care. Digitizing these assets fortifies data security and simplifies compliance audits while empowering HR teams with secure, remote access to the files they need, regardless of their location.
Financial & legal records: Invoices, tax records, contracts, and wills form the backbone of your organization's accountability. Transitioning these to a digital format creates a searchable, auditable archive that protects your most critical agreements and board minutes from physical loss or degradation.

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Healthcare & life sciences: Patient medical records, physician notes, lab reports, X-rays, and pathology slides represent the critical pulse of patient care. Transitioning these records to a digital format facilitates seamless interoperability across care teams and fortifies patient data security in alignment with HIPAA standards. Beyond administrative efficiency, digitization empowers clinical research by transforming static files into accessible data sets that can fuel medical innovation and improve patient outcomes.
Government & public sector: Vital records—including birth and death certificates, property deeds, and vehicle registrations—serve as the foundational evidence of a functioning society. By transitioning these legacy archives to a digital format, agencies safeguard historical continuity and modernize the constituent experience. This transformation allows residents to access essential documents on demand, reducing administrative wait times and providing that the public record remains resilient against the passage of time.
Energy: Technical specifications, engineering diagrams, installation documentation, and site procedures are vital for operations and safety. Digital access provides teams with the correct versions.
Finance & mortgage: Loan applications, tax documents, appraisals, pay stubs, and property titles create massive paper files. Digitization speeds up loan processing and simplifies audit responses.

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Valuable information isn't limited to paper; media and special collections often hold historical and proprietary data that can be unlocked. Modernizing these formats allows you to recover legacy insights that fuel custom AI models and uphold your organization’s institutional memory.

Film-based media: Microfilm, microfiche, and aperture cards—once the standard for long-term archiving—are prone to degradation over time. Transitioning these formats into stable, searchable digital files prevents the loss of historical records and facilitates immediate access to archived data.
Tape: Magnetic formats, including data and backup tapes, can be digitized to recover legacy information and consolidate fragmented archives into modern, cloud-based environments.
Bound & large-format: Bound books, oversized architectural plans, maps, and newspapers require specialized handling to scan without damage. High-resolution imaging preserves the integrity of these large-scale assets for digital research and collaboration.
Audiovisual (AV) & other media: Nearly all AV formats—from audio and video tapes (like VHS) to CDs and DVDs—can be digitized to preserve corporate history, training materials, and media assets.
Special collections: Unique assets like manuscripts, letters, photographs, negatives, and even 3D objects like artwork can be captured with high-resolution imaging for preservation and digital access. This process supports long-term preservation while facilitating global digital access to one-of-a-kind collections.

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A holistic transformation journey

Digitization is the bridge between your physical past and digital future. This transformation strengthens organizational resilience across several key pillars:

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Why Iron Mountain?

For over 75 years, organizations have trusted Iron Mountain to protect and manage their most valuable assets. We are more than a vendor; we are your strategic partner, and we speak from a place of experience and empathy. We understand the complexities of information management, security, and compliance. Our proven processes, secure chain of custody, and advanced technology protect your information at every step. We help you build organizational resilience, bridging the gap between your physical and digital assets to unlock their full value.

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¹ Survey of Records and Information Management Professionals, conducted via a third-party provider, April 2022

Starting your digitization journey: What to scan and why

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The business challenge

The business challenge

Strategic triage: You don't need to digitize everything

How the transformation works

Identify and assess

Secure collection

Preparation and scanning

Data capture and indexing

Secure access

Secure disposition

What can be transformed?

A comprehensive digitization partner can modernize almost any physical asset your organization holds.

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A holistic transformation journey

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Why Iron Mountain?

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We're here to help.

A comprehensive digitization partner can modernize almost any physical asset your organization holds.

Why Iron Mountain?