The scanning process begins when TierFive collects your records. You can either ship boxed files directly to our secure facility or schedule a pickup with our background-checked staff. We can even remove the files from your filing cabinets and create a manifest on-site. Upon receiving every box is labeled, barcoded, and logged to establish a complete chain of custody, ensuring the safe handling of your records from start to finish.

When your documents arrive at our secure facility, we initiate a structured receiving process designed to ensure accuracy, security, and full accountability. Shipments are carefully staged and organized, and each box is inspected for physical condition, label accuracy, completeness, and alignment with the provided packing list. Our team confirms box counts, documents any discrepancies, and promptly communicates any issues to you. Once verified, each box is assigned a unique barcode and entered into our secure tracking system. This enables real-time visibility and allows us to quickly locate and retrieve any specific box—should you need access to a record during processing.

Once received, your documents are carefully batched and prepared for scanning. This is a vital part of the scanning process and the experience our team has removing all staples, paper clips, sticky notes, bindings, straightened folded pages, sorting, and organized into scanning order is a . Low-prep documents may only need a few staples or clips removed. Medium-prep files might have more fasteners, minor folds, or small tears. High-prep materials often include heavy stapling, posting small pages, damaged or fragile pages, and require extra care, including flattening, taping. Fragile or co-mingled oversized materials are flagged for manual handling with specialized glass flat or carrier sheets. Separator sheets or barcodes are inserted where needed to distinguish folders and files.

TierFive’s experienced scanning technicians operate high-resolution, production-class scanners to ensure the digital image of every document is digitized with exceptional accuracy. Our advanced imaging systems produce clean, consistent images while automatically adjusting for page size, alignment, and background noise. Throughout the process, our technicians remain hands-on—actively monitoring image clarity, contrast, gamma, and pagination in real-time to catch and correct issues as they happen. All equipment is maintained by on-site, manufacturer-certified service technicians, and we stock critical wear parts along with dedicated backup units to ensure uninterrupted, high-quality performance. We support high resolution bi-tonal black & white, grayscale, and color scanning, and typically provide output in TIF, PDF, PDF/A, TIFF, or JPEG formats.

TierFive’s production scanners utilize Tungsten Automations Kofax VRS Elite (Virtual ReScan) which serves to further enhances image quality by automatically cleaning up scanned documents, removing background noise, smudges, and shadows to produce sharp, professional-grade images. It adjusts brightness, contrast, and clarity to deliver consistent output across documents, even when originals vary in condition or paper quality. VRS optimizes deliverable file size by preserving and optimizing color. These enhancements not only result in cleaner, more uniform images but also significantly improve OCR accuracy. Kofax VRS is a costly yet defining feature of our services that few others include but helps us to ensure a higher standard of digital conversion.

After scanning, we further enhance your digital files to ensure they’re clean, usable, optimized and compliant with relevant industry requirements. This phase includes de-skewing tilted pages, correcting page orientation, and removing blank pages to streamline file structure. Edges and borders are cropped, background noise is cleaned up, and brightness and contrast are adjusted to improve legibility. The process may also include hole punch removal, image sharpening or smoothing, and color mode optimization to convert unnecessary color pages to grayscale or black & white. Sensitive information can be redacted for compliance, and OCR is often applied to make files fully text-searchable. These enhancements re another defining feature of our services they not only improve visual quality but also ensure the digital files we product for our clients are efficient, regulatory compliant, and easy to work with in any system.

After imaging, TierFive’s experienced operators index and name your files with values such as names, ID numbers, dates, or reference codes directly from the digital images best ensuring that template required keywords and metadata values are accuracy and consistency related to each image. While tools like zonal OCR may be used in some cases due to real world variables we do not rely solely on them for image validation. Instead indexed value verification is performed in a manual key-from-image process to best ensure accuracy, consistent indexing and logical organization. To guarantee accuracy, for mil spec projects we may also apply a double-blind data entry method followed by verification and validation checks.

TierFive’s AI technology, powered by our proprietary LLM models, can be utilized to enhance accuracy and efficiency throughout the metadata extraction process. Operating entirely offline, our AI uses advanced computer vision to analyze document layout elements—such as headers, tables, logos, and form fields—and matches these structural patterns against a library of predefined document type templates. Once the document type is identified, the system applies natural language processing (NLP) and entity recognition to extract the required metadata fields—such as names, dates, ID numbers, reference codes, and totals. These data points are then automatically mapped to the correct metadata fields, even when language or formatting varies across documents. Our AI also applies business logic to validate formats (e.g., date structures or identifier patterns) and assigns confidence scores to each extracted value. Any low-confidence or ambiguous fields are flagged for human review, allowing operators to verify or complete the metadata using our key-from-image process.

Each batch of files undergoes a comprehensive, multi-stage quality control process—beginning immediately after imaging, continuing through metadata validation, and concluding with a final human review before delivery. TierFive’s QC team inspects every job for image clarity, completeness, proper file order, alignment, compression integrity, and metadata accuracy. We also perform random sampling, review any flagged exceptions, and resolve discrepancies to ensure every file meets strict quality and compliance standards. Our QA protocols align with HIPAA, ISO, SOC 2, and other industry regulations. Once approved, files are logically organized into folders using your preferred naming structure. We deliver output in standard delimited ASCII, native file formats, or convert directly into the format required for ingestion by your enterprise content management system—including OnBase, Cirrus File Server, OpenText, Laserfiche, and many others.

For clients in legal, finance, government and similar industries whom require both digital images for efficient day-to-day operations but must also must still retain the original paper documents for compliance; such as industry-specific wet signature requirements or legacy legal mandates. TierFive offers reverse document preparation. After scanning, we carefully reassemble and re-build each file in its original order. Staples and fasteners can be reapplied, and documents are returned to their original folders or binders. You receive your physical records fully restored—re-stapled, refiled, and placed back in their original boxes—ready for continued use or long-term archival.

We deliver your completed digital files and metadata using the method that best aligns with your organization’s security, compliance, and operational requirements. All records are first mastered offline in the specified format, then secured within an AES-256 bit encrypted container. For projects requiring enhanced protection, we offer a cascaded encryption configuration—such as AES–Twofish–Serpent—to create a container with up to 512-bit encryption strength. The encrypted archive is then transferred to a hardware-encrypted external hard drive that is FIPS 140-2 compliant and secured with two-factor authentication (2FA). Alternatively, the encrypted container can be delivered via optical media (including DVD or archival-grade M-Discs), client-supplied USB drives, or through AES-256 encrypted sFTP with TLS 1.3, SSL cipher, and FIPS 140-2 validated compliant secure cloud storage. All deliverables include appropriate folder structures, access controls, and supporting documentation to ensure traceability, auditability, and seamless integration with your document management system. TierFive is HIPAA, ISO and SOC2 certified and our delivery protocols are designed to meet or exceed the data protection requirements of CJIS, FERPA, FISMA, GDPR, FINRA, FADGI, FDA21, HITECH, PCI DSS, and other applicable regulatory standards.

Once your digital files are approved, we follow your instructions for physical record handling. Documents can be returned, stored short-term 30-90 days, archived, or securely shredded. Our NAID AAA compliant cross cut DIN P-4 level shredding service is deal for confidential and personally identifiable information (PII), including medical records, financial data, employee files, and client contracts. and shreds paper into particles ≤ 160 mm² (typically 3.9 x 38 mm). A Certificate of Destruction is issued and adheres to HIPAA and other industry regulations.