As part of our ongoing series on technology planning, this article is going to give an example of a specific kind of technology that many businesses may consider as part of their infrastructure planning efforts – document imaging and document management.  These services and products increase productivity by moving your company towards less paper. 

What exactly does less paper mean?  And what is document imaging and management?  And what’s the value in doing this?   

First of all, let’s be clear that your office will probably never be completely paperless anytime in the near future, especially if you are in an industry that has traditionally relied heavily on it.  Generally speaking, going paperless means that you conduct business in electronic format as much as is practical and possible.  It also means you convert your key existing documents into electronic images and files.  Many industries are legislatively required to maintain records, such as law firms, healthcare organizations, and financial service companies.  For example, law firms are required to keep specific documentation for seven years.  Archiving paper by converting it into electronic format makes storage and retrieval easier and less costly. 

Document imaging is the process of converting paper media into electronic assets that can then be indexed and accessed through your computer.  In many situations, it is the first step towards using a document management system.  You can do this yourself by purchasing a scanner and imaging software or you can outsource the work to a conversion service company.  Depending on the amount of paper documents you process, scanners can range from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand. 

Once your documents are in electronic format, document management software (DMS) leverages this to provide direct value to your business.  A DMS tool allows you to categorize, index, search, share, remotely access, and backup your business documents – all from any connected computer.  These are among the key benefits of proceeding with a document imaging and management solution. 

There are other benefits as well.  All businesses have processes where work is performed and transferred from one person to another whether they know they have them or not, i.e., whether they are formally called out or informally followed.  This includes drafting, reviewing, approving, and sending documents to clients and other external entities. 

DMS tools can improve and enforce workflow consistency by requiring naming conventions and ensuring approval processes are being followed, for example.  However, just as with everything, your staff must buy-in and use the system. 

Converting your documents into electronic format and also provides other cost savings.  One of the hidden costs you reduce is staff spending time finding documents in filing cabinets, processing them, and then returning them to their location.  Lost documents being re-created is another area where you can save time and money.  A very tangible and visible saving is associated with office space due to significantly removing the need of large filing cabinets in your office.  And, a step further, you no longer need to store documents in a warehouse or storage unit either.  In addition to the efficiency and productivity gains I described earlier, these are real costs of doing business that can be eliminated by moving your office towards less paper. 

An associated area that your company may consider while conducting technology planning is disaster planning.  Document imaging and management moves you towards implementing a disaster recovery system.  Having your business information in electronic format enables onsite and offsite/remote backup.  Again, not only are you being compliant to regulations, you are also protecting your business from being severely affected or going under in the case of a disaster. 

So what do you consider when getting started with document imaging and management?  Among other variables, depending on the purpose of this effort, the size of your business, the regulations you are affected by, the amount of paper that you must store, in-house staff skills and expertise, varying approaches are advisable for your needs. 

The areas you want to be concerned about are how easy it to use the software; how do you capture and import documents into the system; can you make annotations similar to sticky notes on paper documents; redacting capabilities (blacking out sensitive information on a document); ease of backup and document distribution; being able to print, fax, and email documents directly from the DMS; does it have built in viewers to allow documents burnt on CDs to be viewed by others who don’t have a DMS; can you track who has opened and viewed documents, and, of course, security.  Security includes not only determining who has access but also to what objects (files, folders, etc). 

Generally speaking, to be considered legal, imaged documents must be stored in an unalterable medium (CD or DVD).  Scanning in documents in a TIFF format ensures the documents are scanned in as is and they cannot be altered.  Having redacting and annotation capabilities helps you modify without changing the underlying document. 

If you are interested in scanning documents for archiving only, you may not need a document management system or at least not one that is very expensive.  The simplest solution for archiving purposes is to scan them in and have the documents available on CD.  Imaging can be done by purchasing scanners and software and having your staff do the scanning.  You may also opt for Optical Character Recognition (OCR)-capable software, which captures the text on each page as the document is scanned in.  This enables you to do keyword searches easily. 

If your plan for imaging and document management is as a central way of conducting business and you require full-text searching, which is likely for the majority of cases, then you have other considerations.  If you are a small- or medium-sized business that is heavily regulated and you have limited staff, you can work with a conversion services company.  They can scan in documents offsite or onsite if you require ad-hoc and immediate access to documents or if security is a major concern. 

There are many ways to improve productivity for your company while reducing costs.  If you have filing cabinets full of paper using valuable office space, use your home to store business documents, or even use a warehouse, digitizing documents will reduce your paper storage.  Adding a DMS to your infrastructure will enable legal compliance and improve you and your staff’s ability to use the documents your business generates.

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