About four years ago, my mom and I got the idea to start scanning her family’s photos onto the computer, so that as they deteriorate we won’t actually lose the images.  There are services that will do this kind of thing for you, but we elected to do it ourself, for the opportunity to go through the photos and identify them as we scan them.

It’s been an interesting journey.  For one thing, we’ve discovered the value of oversized and high volume scanners – we’ve often found ourselves limited by the speed and size (document size) of my scanner.

But at the same time, we’ve learned the value of a scanner that is small and easily transportable (for scanning relatives’ photos on trips), the usefulness of Adobe Photoshop for restoring damaged or faded photos, and how enjoyable it is to see a photographic history of your ancestors unfolding before your very eyes.

We’re finally almost done — there were a ton of pictures to scan, beginning with my grandparents’ childhoods in the nineteen-teens and -twenties, as well as a handful or so of older photos.  Once we’ve finished identifying everything and naming the photos, we’re planning on making CDs (or perhaps DVDs, depending on how much memory we need) for everyone in the family.

Technorati Tags: Adobe Photoshop, document imaging service, faded photos, high volume scanners

One of the things that I have believed for my entire business career is that as a business, you need to differentiate yourself from your competition to prosper.  For many businesses, this can be a challenge, and sometimes requires a little thought, but if you take the time to figure things out, you would be amazed at what you can come up with.

That is exactly the problem we were facing just six months ago - there were two copy shops in town, and we offered similar services.  What made it worse is that we pretty much copied each other when it came to specials, and neither of us were leaders in the market.

But I thought that we could branch out and be better than our competition - just if we could figure out a good way to do it.  We decided that we should see if we could provide unique data storage solutions for our clients.

After talking to some document imaging companies, we came up with a solution.  We decided to offer our clients the opportunity to copy in an environmentally friendly manner - with high volume scanners.  It was the right move, and our company has become the leader in our market in both paper and paperless copying solutions.

Technorati Tags: data storage solutions, document imaging companies, high volume scanners