subject: Effectively Implement A Document Scanning And Management System Within Your Business. [print this page] Electronic document management is the best route for companies who want the flow of information to be fast, efficient and as close to faultless as possible. The ability to keep managers and customers upto date with the latest information is
a breeze utilising a simple document scanning, storage and retrieval system. Be careful when choosing the type, brand and capability of your chosen scanner as there are many on the market which makes choice a bit of a minefield. Give careful thought to the demands you are going to place on the scanner. Do you need only A4 capability or occasionally A3? Do you need to scan in colour or will black and white be sufficient? Is your volume high enough to warrant a document feeder or could you get away with a flatbed scanner where you lift the scanning lid each time you scan a page?
Document scanning is the physical act of capturing the original image from a printed page. It is the starting point for any document management system. What you do with it afterwards is what makes the system hugely efficient or hugely inefficient, dependant on how have chosen to electronically store, reference and extract the scanned information off the page. More on this.
Desktop scanning is most useful when you are using it as an intrinsic part of your daily business paper flow, to store current documents, invoices, letters, delivery notes, bank statements etc. Multiple users can all access the system to upload documents to your server but where information is sensitive access passwords can be utiilised to ensure inter-departmental security when it comes to retrieval i.e. Fred Smith cannot see his personnel files that have been scanned by the HR department, unless he has an access code.
One of the other major benefits of document scanning and management for larger organisation is the ability for several users to view the same document at the same time. This negates the need for photocopying and distribution or emailing information that clogs up bandwith or computer storage. A practical demonstration of this facility comes from a building company who need to discuss builders notes and drawings with a quantity surveyor, architect and project manager, all of whom are in different locations. By providing them with an access password they can log in to the Document Management system and all view the relevant documents at the same time making discussion and rectification a very simple task.
Scanning documents and storing them in this way is one thing but the quality of the retrieval is arguably more important then the inputting. By this we mean what criteria you use to create indexes e.g. a delivery note might need to be accessed by date, destination, customers signature, contents, shortages, time of delivery etc. A despatch note would need customer, address, items by line and quantities as a bare minimum. By carefully evaluating the information you want to access ( bar code scanning is an ideal way to handle this) at the point of scanning you will save an inordinate amount of time later when retrieval is needed. This is where the big pay offs become availble. Imagine being able to respond to a customers request which could result in possible reordering by pulling up a previous order in a heartbeat instead of heading off to the filing area, only to find the file is either missing or on someone elses desk. (The office of national statists calculate that 7% of files are misfiled making retrieval a very lengthy process and far from efficient - time is money)
Establish the goals for your scanning project.
After you decide to engage in desktop scanning, the next step is to evaluate the document types you intend to capture, and determine who will need access to the data once it is stored. Although the need may appear to be isolated to your department, limiting the data"s usefulness without examining company-wide needs is short-sighted. Consider the various document types that enter your office. Which documents are related, and which depend upon each other during the business process? What information is typically used to associate documents with each other in the physical storage process? What other departments rely on information contained in each of the forms? Which information is sensitive and needs to be restricted to pre-authorized persons? The answers to these questions will help you to establish a document scanning strategy that will maximize the usefulness of information to everyone in your organization who legitimately needs access.
Getting started: best practices for effective desktop scanning
1. Establish simple business rules that make sense to the end user
In some cases, desktop scanning equipment is operated exclusively by staff, and in other cases, it may be desirable to put the power of scanning into the hands of the customer. When you configure your desktop scanning software, make sure the end user"s choices are clear and simple, as they would be at an ATM machine. If multiple form types are routinely scanned, for example, the customer might select the document type from a drop-down menu which then automatically pre-fills other information pertaining to that form. Simplicity is the key to successful staff adoption and customer acceptance and appreciation of the technology.
2. Scan images at the relevant resolution
Document scanning must be done in consideration of the original quality i.e. dont scan at high resolution if its just a hand written note. Nothing substitutes for quality, and nowhere is this truer than with a scanned image. The future value of the document and its data will depend on the usefulness of the scanned image, so the required resolution must be carefully considered. Higher resolution can mean greater storage requirements; in spite of this, short-sightedness has consequences when an image lacks readability or is rendered useless for future purposes. Use file formats and compression techniques that are non-proprietary and conform to industry standards.
3. Indexing.
One of the advantages of desktop scanning is easy indexing of scanned documents. Even a screen with one or two categories in a drop-down menu helps you to categorize information for future retrieval. For multiple document types, auto indexing pre-sorts diverse forms into digital batches, enabling staff to continue the indexing process manually or with drop-down menus pertaining to their departments, directly from their desktops. The most important aspect of document indexing is to know the different types of people who will need to access data that is captured through the desktop scanning process and how they typically search for information.
4. Verify the quality of the scans
High-quality desktop scanning solutions do an excellent job of automatically verifying the completion and integrity of scans. They typically report the certainty of a scanned image quality as they create the electronic image, just as a printer informs the user of the degree to which a requested printing process is complete. Images that register less than 100% certainty of a quality scan can be identified easily and imaged again immediately. Since documents that have been shredded clearly can not be sent to be rescanned, having an indexer or member of staff skim the scanned images to confirm their quality is both prudent and recommended, especially when sensitive information, or items that could support eventual litigation, are involved.
5. Store data in a central, searchable electronic document management system
Ideally, an electronic document management system is a central storage bank for all of a company"s information. Regardless of whether data is collected by reading bar codes, capturing faxes and emails or electronic forms, storing video files, or through the desktop scanning process, documents and data are all stored together and are instantly searchable. Since a large volume of information collected by most companies still originates on paper, desktop scanning is a critical element in the process.
Summary
As you evaluate desktop scanning, make sure you have an eye to both your short- and long-term needs. Take the time to study your documents and understand how they fit into the business cycle. Talk with all levels of staff to understand how those documents are used, both within and beyond your department. Like all aspects of a successful business, document scanning and management requries constant development if you are to extract maximum return on investment and gain a truly efficient competitive edge.
