Microfilm Replacement

Cost

Due to advances in imaging technology, microfilm machines no longer have a price advantage over imaging systems. When looking at the whole picture, the life-cycle cost of an Acordex Safekeep system is much lower.

Performance

Microfilm machines have a number of performance disadvantages which increase the long term cost of microfilm machine ownership.

  • Documents archived on microfilm are not available for retrieval for one to several days after the document is photographed. Safekeep documents may be displayed or printed immediately after scanning the original.

  • Additions and corrections to documents cannot be attached to the original document on microfilm. This increases document preparation labor. Incomplete documents must be stored while you wait for more pages. Safekeep lets you add pages anytime and automatically retrieves an entire document in one click.
  • Retrieve time with microfilm is hundreds of times slower than retrieving a document from Safekeep. This means huge labor savings with Safekeep.

  • Printed copies of microfilmed documents do not match the clarity of a copy reproduced from Safekeep's laser printer. Clearer images are easier to read and therefore take less time.

  • Due to the mechanical nature of microfilm machines, they are not as reliable as Safekeep. Downtime costs money.

  • Film is much less reliable than digital media. It dries out, gets brittle and breaks with age. Current DVD technology does not have these problems.

  • The per page media costs for computer image storage is now less than film.

    Future of Document Management

    For all these reasons and more, microfilm machines are at the end of their product life. Film prices offer no cost saving to offset their performance disadvantages. Acordex has migrated others from microfilm, including Computer Aided Retrieval (CAR) compatability!

    Contact Acordex for a free consultation to analyze your imaging requirements. There is no obligation and no sales pressure, just a technical evaluation of your business needs.