- 07 | 11 | 2025
Old Christmas party invitations. Out-of-date brochures. Print-outs of slide decks from 2017. If yours is anything like the average organisation, a quick glance through desk drawers and storage cupboards would probably uncover all of the above, and more.
Hoarding unnecessary paper is one thing; paying a removals firm to move it to a new location is quite another.
If you’re planning an office move, it’s worth taking some basic document management steps to make sure your relocation is cost-effective and efficient. But that’s just table stakes. When housing association Trudo moved offices, the team took the opportunity to upgrade its document processes along with its premises. Why not take a leaf out of Trudo’s book and use your relocation or refurbishment project as the springboard to modernise your records management?
Whether you want to save money (and your carbon footprint) in the short term, or improve your organisation-wide efficiency in a lasting way, we’ve got ideas for you.
It’s never too soon to audit what documents you hold. We can help you design and deploy a plan to send legacy files to outsourced storage, digitise the useful information, and destroy what you don’t need. We’ve worked with organisations from legal firms to doctors’ surgeries who saved money by downsizing to smaller premises, once they’d got rid of space-hogging filing cabinets and storage boxes.
If you’ve already found new premises and have engaged a removals firm, there’s still time to make sure you’re not paying to relocate rubbish. Your internal team won’t have the capacity or specialist technology to check and reorganise thousands of documents – but we do. Our document experts can check through your files before you move, then store, scan, or securely destroy in line with regulations.
High-value, confidential and sensitive documents, as well as those you’re obliged to keep for compliance reasons, need to be kept in the right environment. A specialist records and information management partner like OASIS has the trained staff, security certifications, and purpose-built premises, to store your paperwork correctly. Meaning you can free up space in your new office and avoid compliance headaches too.
Plus, if you need access to files at any time, we can get digital versions to you in under four hours on average, with our scan-on-demand service.
If you’ve completed Level One, congratulations! You’ve sorted out your hardcopy documents so you don’t waste money or energy transporting ROT (redundant, obsolete or trivial) papers from the old office to the new. And you’ve given the documents you DO need to move the best possible protection in the process.
Now it’s time to step it up a gear.
The best time to make the shift from paper to digital is yesterday. Organisations that reduce their reliance on paper find it easier to collaborate, to comply with regulations and to improve customer service. However, when you’re grappling with legacy systems or resistance to change, promoting a digital agenda can be tough.
A relocation is the perfect time for a fresh start. Not only will high-volume scanning of paper archives save you space in your new premises, it can set you up for a more efficient way of working from the outset. Trudo digitised 100% of its document archive – measuring 300m end-to-end – and now the team get the information they need at the click of a button, instead of digging around in dusty boxes.
“We want colleagues to be able to access the right information anytime, anywhere. Whether you’re at the office or working from home, you need to be able to find what you’re looking for quickly. That’s the core of the project. With OASIS, the digitisation worked surprisingly smoothly.”
Winny Fast, Communications Team, Trudo
Once your archives are scanned in and easily accessible, the next step is to make sure new documents are digitised. We can digitise documents that arrive in hardcopy (like letters or contracts) on an ongoing basis, and store or destroy the paper versions. That way your document archive can scale without impinging on your office space.
Making smart decisions about what to digitise can impact your carbon footprint as well as your bottom line. We’re working with pioneering academics in this space to define best practice and support clients on digital decarbonisation.
Imagine if all your scanned files could be delivered into your existing SharePoint environment, and currently siloed systems like HR platforms and the CRM could feed into it, too. Enter FileSmart, our enterprise-grade Microsoft 365 add-on. It’s 80% SharePoint, with 20% customisation to add your preferred controls, retention policies, permission settings, and a more user-friendly interface.
As the finishing touch to your new office environment, all your digital data can be connected, searched and shared without the need for a new, third-party EDRMS (electronic document and records management system). IT will be happy because data stays in your environment, and your finance director will thank you for the 50% average savings versus standalone EDRMS systems.
We work with organisations across Europe to help them operate smarter, more efficiently and more sustainably.
Talk to our document management specialists about how you can clean up your data and give your organisation a fresh start – in your new office and beyond.
