Many businesses have adopted enterprise content management (ECM) and document management systems (DMS) to convert slow, inefficient, and expensive paper-based processes to digital form. But according to a Keypoint Intelligence/InfoTrends study, most incoming work documents (anywhere between 51 and 67 percent) are in paper form.
Figure: Of all external business content that your company receives, what percentage comes in as paper?
Source: Future of Scanning (Keypoint Intelligence/InfoTrends, 2015)
So while businesses can do extraordinary things with documents in digital form, like automating their business process and enabling users to share documents instantly around the globe, they are still stuck with the problem of efficiently merging information trapped in paper with their digital solutions.
Solve one problem, create another.
Luckily, the same devices that are responsible for all of this paper—namely printers, copiers, and MFPs—are also the answer. Businesses can leverage their MFPs to do much more than just print, copy, fax, and scan paper documents.
Many are outfitted with embedded capture applications, or can hook in to PC or server-based capture solutions. These enable businesses to efficiently capture, process, and route documents to a document management system, an electronic content management platform, business process automation software, or other business applications.
Key characteristics of a capture solution
Capture
Before you can integrate paper document into your systems, you must digitize them. Many solutions convert paper documents to popular static file types, such as TIFF, image PDF, and JPG. These solutions are built to meet varying needs, from knowledge workers capturing a few documents a day, all the way up to scan operators tasked with capturing huge volumes of batches all day.
Processing
Once a document is captured, users can employ a plethora of image enhancement and conversion settings to deliver it to its desired location in the needed form and quality. Many leading technologies employ sophisticated algorithms to intelligently enhance captured images to ensure easy readability.
Users can apply optical character recognition (OCR) zones (or OCR across the entire document) or barcode recognition settings to separate batches, convert documents to dynamic form, and/or read and act on encoded indexing and routing instructions.
Many solutions enable users to configure customizable scan profiles that can be assigned to a hard or soft key on the device’s control panel to streamline commonly used scanning workflows. These profiles can include everything from resolution and thresholding settings, to where OCR zones should be deployed, to where the document should be routed.
Routing
Many capture applications dovetail with email applications, cloud services, watched folders, document/electronic content management platforms, or other business applications and backend systems out of the box. This enables users to send scans to specific locations directly from the control panel. This eliminates the need to scan a document to a local folder, then move it to the desired location. Contact us to find the right document/electronic content management solution for your organization.