Document scanning services market

Document scanning is nothing but the conversion of paper documents into useful and accessible digital files, such as: PDF, TIFF, JPEG, and other formats.  Document scanning services are widely used in various industries such as healthcare, legal firms, BFSI, government, education, e-commerce and logistics, architecture firms, and others. The increasing demand for document scanning services in the medical sector is expected to drive the global document scanning services market growth during the forecast period. Moreover, the rising adoption of smartphones, smart scanners, and connecting technologies such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0, and the Internet of Things (IoT) are expected to drive demand for these services during the forecast period.

The global document scanning services market is expected to witness significant growth during the forecast period (2020–2027). The increasing demand for document scanning services in the medical sector is expected to drive the global document scanning services market growth during the forecast period. Due to advancements in technologies such as optical character recognition (OCR), many hospitals and clinics are adopting paperless management systems and paperless medical records. As in the medical industry, every firm faces a huge amount of data entry work, which also include numerous paperwork. Thus, many firms are adopting document scanning services and converting data into electronic health records (EHR), which reduces time wasted in billing, reduces cost of scanning, and create enough storage space in the organizations. For instance, according to Stratagem Market Insight analysis, NHS, The National Health Service, a publicly funded healthcare system in England save US$ 425.4 million a year, in order to save money and also to improve the quality of care. Thus, scanning medical records solution saw a 30% reduction in paper-handling costs.

Furthermore, medical record scanning services help clinics and hospitals add paper-based patient charts to Electronic Medical Record (EMR) and Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems. A number of healthcare organizations such as VENSO Technologies are implementing EMR and EHR systems, which increases the demand for medical records scanning services in the market. As, movement of paper across multiple sites can create the risk of loss and misplacement, and paper-based records require a high level of administration by medical secretaries, doctors, and medical records staff. Moreover, a huge amount of data is generated in the hospitals and clinics, owing to the increasing number of patients being treated and the rising number of medical facilities.  Management of data and the need to minimize the use of paper to reduce operational costs and storage issues are expected to drive the market growth during the forecast period.

There are many possible vulnerabilities present in managing the document services. The vulnerabilities such as data and security breaches, identity theft, sharing of sensitive information, and other threats of cyber attacks. This will damage the reputation of the organization and eventually hamper the confidence of people who is running the business. This in turn, may create liability to lawsuits and criminal penalties. Important information is stored in cloud and databases, which enable cybercriminals to disrupt valuable company data and use it to enter unlawful dealing. Besides, data privacy, crucial document management security concern, and need for huge investment are expected to hamper the market growth during the forecast period.

Global Document Scanning Services Market - Impact of Coronavirus (Covid-19) Pandemic

The rapid outbreak of COVID-19 across the globe has significantly affected all the industries globally. The situation caused significant deterioration in economic conditions and government had to shut down commercial as well as educational sectors for a specific period. Strict containment measures have resulted in a drop of economic activities and the business environment of many organizations has changed. For instance - the ongoing and planned projects of construction, mining, and other industries have been delayed, or cancelled. The impact of COVID 19 on the Global and Japan document scanning services market can be divided into two types: short time impact and long term impact. In the short term impact, the document scanning services market witnessed various types of challenges such as lack of proper logistic infrastructure during the COVID 19 pandemic to collect and deliver documents, and others which resulted in drop of the companies’ revenue. For instance, Iron Mountain Inc., a U.S.-based storage and information management services providing company, witnessed 2.7% drop in the revenue in year 2020 compared to 2019. This drop in revenue is mainly attributed to COVID-19’s impact on the business.

North America held dominant position in the global document scanning services market during the forecast period

Statistics:

North America held dominant position in the global document scanning services market in 2020, accounting for 34% share in terms of value, followed by Asia Pacific and Europe.

Figure 1: Global Document Scanning Market Share (%), By Region, 2020

North America accounted for the highest market share in the global document scanning services market over the forecast period. The growth in the region is attributed to the rising penetration of core technologies such as OCR (Optical Character Recognition), ICR (Intelligent Character Recognition), and the presence of technology giants in the region such as Iron Mountain Inc., Access Scanning Document Services, LLC, and others.

Asia Pacific is expected to exhibit highest CAGR over the forecast period owing to the increasing adoption of cloud-based document scanning services among various organizations. Document Scanning offers a safe repository of data which can also be shared on cloud or local document management system enabling recovery of important documents in just a simple click. For instance, Essjay Copier Pvt. Ltd., an India-based company, offers document scanning services and secure storage in the cloud.

Offsite Service is expected to drive the market growth during the forecast period

Among service type, the offsite service segment is expected to hold dominant position in the global document scanning services market during the forecast period. In off-site document scanning, documents can be collected or shipped to the service provider company’s secure conversion centers and then scanning operations are performed. Most businesses look to expand their presence online and choose to carry out business operations digitally and are finding ways to achieve effective document digitisation. Businesses are now looking to digitise entire archives to keep up with their competitors. Rising need to achieve effective document digitisation coupled with reliable and cost effective document conversion processes offered by off-site document scanning services are expected to drive the market growth. Many organizations such as education institutes, banks, e-commerce and logistics companies, etc. choose off-site scanning services to undertake their digitisation projects. With an offsite scanning, businesses can be assured that their documents are going to be suitably looked after throughout the entire digitisation process.

Figure 2: Global Document Scanning Market Value (US$ Mn) Analysis and Forecast, 2017 - 2027

The global document scanning services market was valued at US$ 2,852.8 Mn in 2020 and is expected grow at a CAGR of 9.6% between 2021 and 2028.

Major players operating in the global document scanning services market include Access Scanning Document Services, LLC, Ripcord, Inc., Armstrong Archives, LLC, Chicago Records Management Inc., Cube Records Management Services, The Scanning Company, Smooth Solutions Inc., VENSO Technologies, Shoreline Records Management, Inc., Pearl Scan, iGuana, Cleardata UK Ltd., KnowledgeLake, Microimage Technologies Limited, ScanWorld Station Limited, The Apache Software Foundation, Advanced Data Solutions, Inc., Blue-Pencil Information Security Inc., Iron Mountain Inc., Flatworld Solutions Pvt. Ltd., Royal Imaging, Pacific Records Management, DataGuard USA (Record Nations), Scanning America Inc