Posted by Mark Brousseau
In a recent document management industry survey sponsored by Oce Business Services, 83 percent of respondents indicated that their organization has a records management program in place. However, only 10 percent of the executives surveyed said their company's program included an integrated electronic records repository. This indicates that integrating digital processes and technology into their records programs could be an untapped opportunity for many companies.
Today's challenging business environment includes stringent statutory and regulatory mandates from a host of entities that require following specific processes. Digitizing business records – when implemented in an organized fashion using best practices – can help ensure that records are easily retrievable, storage costs are under control, legal discovery costs are mitigated and the organization is compliant.
An effective electronic document management program spans the capture, management, storage, preservation, and delivery of document images. Oce highlights the following key steps for developing and designing a thorough document capture process.
Sorting and Preparing
Sorting and preparing sets the stage for efficiently digitizing hard copy documents. In these steps, documents are sorted into a logical sequence to ensure that they are properly identified and routed for the capture process. Developing and implementing a logical sort sequence enables organizations to maximize the scanning process, insure intelligent distribution of images, and enhance future retrieval requirements. During this process technologies such as barcodes can be applied to reduce manual intervention and automate workflow processes, record retention, and image retrieval. Document preparation helps ensure that there are no obstacles present to interfere with maximum document processing.
Scanning
The preparation process is designed to make sure that documents will be transported through the scanner cleanly and efficiently. Using the proper equipment is important to this step. Scanner manufacturers provide a rated processing speed for each model they produce. When determining the proper scanner to use, organizations should consider the number of separator sheets that will be inserted in order to estimate the true volume and speed of the scanning process. (Separator sheets are pre-printed sheets of paper that have codes on them. Each time the scanning software encounters a separator sheet, it creates a separate document containing the pages found under it.) Other determining factors include size of paper to be scanned, simplex (one-sided page) versus duplex (two-sided page) scanning, and color requirements.
Indexing
The final step of the capture process is indexing. This is the process of assigning metadata (defined as data about data) to each image file. This metadata can be applied in a multitude of ways. One is manual data entry, which entails viewing the images and manually typing in certain metadata residing on the electronic image. Another method is using OCR (optical character recognition) software, which extracts certain data elements from the images and then applies this metadata to the image file. This eliminates possible operator error and improves metadata accuracy. A third approach is to employ technology that reads a barcode, a unique label on the document containing data that can be read by a computer.
Showing posts with label document processing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label document processing. Show all posts
Monday, July 5, 2010
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
8 business imperatives for driving competitive advantage
Posted by Mark Brousseau
Businesses face eight strategic imperatives that will play determining factors in their short- and long-term success following the economic crisis, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC).
PwC’s recommendations include:
1. Sustain cost-reduction measures in order to improve margins with a smaller, more productive workforce and use newly freed resources for investments in the company's future.
2. Align risk to performance and create individual accountability measures by integrating risk at a business unit level and creating more personal accountability and reward structures.
3. Prepare for major regulatory changes through a cross-section of issues—international tax frameworks, infrastructure development, healthcare costs and environmental policies.
4. Enhance trust in your business through voluntary disclosures or independent verifications in areas such as supply chain integrity, measurement of carbon emissions and data integrity, to satisfy discerning stakeholders who now demand greater levels of transparency when making decisions about where to invest.
5. Make technology a strategic asset and competitive differentiator by increasing your investment in technology infrastructure and applications.
6. Leverage innovation to underscore differentiation, especially around hot-button global issues such as sustainability and climate change.
7. Move forward with deferred transactions and deals to help grow, protect value, and capture benefits of scale, productivity and efficiency.
8. Invest in leadership, talent development and deployment of for your employees, starting with the C-Suite.
"Executives must renew their focus on the most important issues to accelerate growth - both top and bottom line," says Bob Moritz, US chairman and senior partner, PricewaterhouseCoopers. "We believe that organizations that better engage key stakeholders while also making strategic IT, innovation, M&A and people investments will unleash potential growth that will create long-term competitive advantages."
These strategies have become particularly important as U.S. CEOs continue to respond to the significant shifts underpinning America's economic recovery. When asked about threats to business growth as their companies emerge from the recession, U.S. CEOs express the greatest concern about the prospect of overregulation, followed by shifts in consumer behaviors.
Interestingly, these concerns weigh more heavily in the US than elsewhere: 71 percent of U.S. CEOs are either somewhat or extremely concerned about overregulation compared to 60 percent of global CEOs; 62 percent of U.S. CEOs worry about changing consumer behaviors compared to 48 percent of global CEOs. Meanwhile, concerns about talent shortages have temporarily receded in the US, with CEOs focusing on organizational redesign and employee engagement and morale programs.
Businesses face eight strategic imperatives that will play determining factors in their short- and long-term success following the economic crisis, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC).
PwC’s recommendations include:
1. Sustain cost-reduction measures in order to improve margins with a smaller, more productive workforce and use newly freed resources for investments in the company's future.
2. Align risk to performance and create individual accountability measures by integrating risk at a business unit level and creating more personal accountability and reward structures.
3. Prepare for major regulatory changes through a cross-section of issues—international tax frameworks, infrastructure development, healthcare costs and environmental policies.
4. Enhance trust in your business through voluntary disclosures or independent verifications in areas such as supply chain integrity, measurement of carbon emissions and data integrity, to satisfy discerning stakeholders who now demand greater levels of transparency when making decisions about where to invest.
5. Make technology a strategic asset and competitive differentiator by increasing your investment in technology infrastructure and applications.
6. Leverage innovation to underscore differentiation, especially around hot-button global issues such as sustainability and climate change.
7. Move forward with deferred transactions and deals to help grow, protect value, and capture benefits of scale, productivity and efficiency.
8. Invest in leadership, talent development and deployment of for your employees, starting with the C-Suite.
"Executives must renew their focus on the most important issues to accelerate growth - both top and bottom line," says Bob Moritz, US chairman and senior partner, PricewaterhouseCoopers. "We believe that organizations that better engage key stakeholders while also making strategic IT, innovation, M&A and people investments will unleash potential growth that will create long-term competitive advantages."
These strategies have become particularly important as U.S. CEOs continue to respond to the significant shifts underpinning America's economic recovery. When asked about threats to business growth as their companies emerge from the recession, U.S. CEOs express the greatest concern about the prospect of overregulation, followed by shifts in consumer behaviors.
Interestingly, these concerns weigh more heavily in the US than elsewhere: 71 percent of U.S. CEOs are either somewhat or extremely concerned about overregulation compared to 60 percent of global CEOs; 62 percent of U.S. CEOs worry about changing consumer behaviors compared to 48 percent of global CEOs. Meanwhile, concerns about talent shortages have temporarily receded in the US, with CEOs focusing on organizational redesign and employee engagement and morale programs.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Rethinking Document Design
By Mark Brousseau
When in control of designing handprint forms that your company is processing, create data fields with constrained boxes for each character, Fatali Karimi of AliusDoc, Inc. (fatalikarimi@aliusdoc.com) said during a pre-conference workshop at the TAWPI Forum & Expo in Washington, D.C. this morning.
Karimi suggests pre-printing each separated character box in a dropout color. Dropout refers to a technique where color filtering is used to remove some or all of the pre-printed form elements during or immediately after scanning the form.
"I recommend using a light shade of red for dropout, since people hardly ever use a red pen to fill out the forms," Karimi told workshop attendees. "If forms are designed in a dropout shade of green, and they are filled out with a blue pen, there's a good chance that after scanning the characters will be fragmented or totally dropped out."
Color dropout can occur either by using a special color bulb in the scanner or by applying software-based color filtering, Karimi noted. If you are using a color scanner bulb, the scanner manufacturer will provide you with a precise ink color specification for the dropout elements.
What do you think?
When in control of designing handprint forms that your company is processing, create data fields with constrained boxes for each character, Fatali Karimi of AliusDoc, Inc. (fatalikarimi@aliusdoc.com) said during a pre-conference workshop at the TAWPI Forum & Expo in Washington, D.C. this morning.
Karimi suggests pre-printing each separated character box in a dropout color. Dropout refers to a technique where color filtering is used to remove some or all of the pre-printed form elements during or immediately after scanning the form.
"I recommend using a light shade of red for dropout, since people hardly ever use a red pen to fill out the forms," Karimi told workshop attendees. "If forms are designed in a dropout shade of green, and they are filled out with a blue pen, there's a good chance that after scanning the characters will be fragmented or totally dropped out."
Color dropout can occur either by using a special color bulb in the scanner or by applying software-based color filtering, Karimi noted. If you are using a color scanner bulb, the scanner manufacturer will provide you with a precise ink color specification for the dropout elements.
What do you think?
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Production Scanning Still Hot
By Mark Brousseau
Don’t let the growth of workgroup and distributed scanning fool you – there is still a need for production scanners, particularly among companies implementing shared services organizations. That’s according to Mark Fairchild, senior vice president, technology portfolio management, at BancTec, Inc. Fairchild noted that many shared services programs begin with financial business processes, but expand to include general document processing.
Demand for production scanners is particularly strong in the accounts payable space, Fairchild told me, where manufacturers, utilities and retailers, among others, are looking to automate invoice processing. Meantime, declining check volumes has created an opportunity in the financial services arena for scanners that can handle documents and checks comingled, he said.
Not surprisingly, Fairchild says BancTec continues to see growth in its high-speed scanner sales, with financial services and educational testing companies and service bureaus leading the way. The draw? Reductions in labor and customer service costs, and improved quality.
What do you think? E-mail me at m_brousseau@msn.com.
Don’t let the growth of workgroup and distributed scanning fool you – there is still a need for production scanners, particularly among companies implementing shared services organizations. That’s according to Mark Fairchild, senior vice president, technology portfolio management, at BancTec, Inc. Fairchild noted that many shared services programs begin with financial business processes, but expand to include general document processing.
Demand for production scanners is particularly strong in the accounts payable space, Fairchild told me, where manufacturers, utilities and retailers, among others, are looking to automate invoice processing. Meantime, declining check volumes has created an opportunity in the financial services arena for scanners that can handle documents and checks comingled, he said.
Not surprisingly, Fairchild says BancTec continues to see growth in its high-speed scanner sales, with financial services and educational testing companies and service bureaus leading the way. The draw? Reductions in labor and customer service costs, and improved quality.
What do you think? E-mail me at m_brousseau@msn.com.
Friday, June 8, 2007
Convergence of Payments and Document Processing
Probably my most anticipated educational session at the TAWPI Show this August in Boston will be (believe it or not) taking place at 3:30pm on Sunday. If you haven't yet checked out the session's taking place on Sunday you better look again at the program. Some great stuff there.. The session I'm talking about is entitled; The Convergence of Payments & Document Processing- Opportunities & Challenges.We've got some heavy hitters from the TAWPI board sitting on this panel namely Bob Young from Verizon, Joe Sass US Bank, Linda Dollens Indiana Department of Revenue, Mark Stevens OPEX, Bruce Wallace Wells Fargo and our moderator will be Doug Hartsema JP Morgan Chase.
What's more interesting however is the topic and really how much of a reality the convergence of payments and document processing is today. It is interesting for me to sit in the middle and look over both sides of the fence. With Check 21 becoming a reality it opens the doors to all sorts of providers out there to jump into the fun. Some vendors who have traditionally been looked at as only document capture guys cannot be categorized as such anymore like a, Kofax, ReadSoft, AnyDoc, etc. and other's who have been looked at more as strictly check capture folks, WAUSAU, Metavante, NetDeposit, J&B Software, Alogent, etc. are or will soon begin to cross-pollunate into both business applications. The landscape is getting hazy when it comes to who to go with for a check or document capture provider and more and guys who have never clashed against each other in RFP's will begin to do so. It won't matter anymore whether the document is a Check or an EOB.
Another interesting trend to think about in this convergence game between check and document and seems to be more under the radar screen are these large outsourcing check processing and remittance processing companies offering more traditional forms processing services on top of their check processing services. Not a far jump for them either. The thing is, I don't think the Service Bureau's who are strictly focused on forms processing are seeing this coming down the road...
Regardless, this session on Sunday shouldn't be missed.
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