While consumers and companies store most of their information digitally nowadays, paper is still very much part of day-to-day life, a fact that collaboration providers are finally starting to embrace. Dropbox Inc. is leading the charge by rolling out a scanning feature for its mobile app that provides the ability to directly upload photos of documents, receipts and other physical media to its cloud service.

After the synchronization is complete, users with business accounts can utilize a new search option introduced in conjunction to find specific words and phrases. The functionality is complemented by an updated commenting mechanism that makes it possible to place notes next to specific sections of a scanned document or photo. Dropbox sees the addition coming particularly coming handy in team settings like, say, graphic design departments where users share a large amount of complex graphics. Such environments also require controls to ensure that company property can only be viewed by authorized personnel, which is why the provider is also rolling out new access management features.

Users can now selectively share files with individual colleagues and set them to view-only mode if need be to block outside modifications. But if something goes wrong anyway, Dropbox has a new versioning feature similar to the one in Google Docs that makes it possible to quickly roll back changes. The functionality should enable the company to compete much more effectively with archnemesis Box Inc. in the corporate world, where users are much more likely to buy paid subscriptions than consumers.

Dropbox can be expected to continue adding more enterprise-oriented features as it works to increase profitability. The provider claims to have more than 500 million users but only a small fraction hail from the enterprise world and a smaller portion still have paid subscriptions, which leaves plenty of room for growth.

Image via Dropbox