Document Management

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DocPoint allows you to easily add emails directly from Outlook to your document repository. Click here to view a short demo.

Washington, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty has ordered the deletion of all e-mails not saved by city government workers in January of 2008. The more e-mail government employees send, the more there is to store, costing taxpayers money. But costs must be balanced against the need to preserve history.

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DocPoint allows you to easily add emails directly from Outlook to your document repository. Click here to view a short demo.

A short video in which CNN’s Gerri Willis explains how to clean up the clutter in your home office:

Information. Your business depends on it. But can your employees easily locate the information they need when they need it? In most companies, documents are stored in a variety of places - on networks, on individual PC hard drives, CDs and zip drives, in file cabinets and in desk drawers. To complicate matters, the people who need to access these documents are often situated in different locations as well.

The answer for an increasing number of businesses - large and small - is a document management system. The following information can help you determine if a document management system is right for your business.

Understanding Document Management

Document management is an organizational method. More specifically, it is a technology-based means of storing documents. Documents (and sometimes images) are held in a single repository that simplifies managing and retrieving the files when necessary. Since organizations have diverse needs, systems are often custom designed.

How it Works

Document management typically begins with using a scanner to convert paper documents into digitized images. Once all files are electronic, it is easier to organize the information.

In the next step, sometimes referred to as indexing, the scanned image is typically given a name containing the date. The user is often asked to type in additional “tags” or indexing criteria. For instance, if you were scanning a customer’s financial plan, you might tag it with the name of the customer, the words “financial plan,” and the date. The system stores the scanned file by associating the image with the tags. Accurate tags make it easier to find the document you need.

When you need to retrieve a document from the system, you perform a search by entering one of the tags. The request is processed and the information is retrieved.Document management systems include security measures to ensure that only authorized users have access. These measures determine which documents certain people can read, and what actions or modifications they can make.

Benefits to the Business and its Employees

An effective document management system helps companies become better organized by making it easier to file, share, retrieve and secure information. Employees can also be more productive since they save time searching for business-critical information. A good document management system also facilitates collaboration, decision-making and the ability to build upon the work of others.

Digital files have functionality that is not possible with paper files. With a document management system in place, multiple people, even those working from home offices or the field, can access and work on files simultaneously.

Improved customer service is another important byproduct. Files are at the fingertips of all employees so that customer inquiries can be answered more quickly and effectively. There may also be a savings in printing and copying expenses and less need for onsite and offsite file storage space.

According to a recent Xerox survey, four out of five technology professionals say document management is part of an effective IT strategy.

Xerox conducted the survey with International Communications Research (ICR) and found that close to 75 percent of participants said their offices were still using paper as a means of information management and storage. The company says that most IT departments are spending as much as 40 percent of their time and budget administering document technology, with 83 percent of those surveyed seeing it as an area ripe for improvement.

ICR conducted 250 telephone interviews with senior-level IT staff in businesses of 100 or more employees around the US between July 11 and Aug. 15 this year. Additionally, it found that one-third of participants feel their organizations don’t have a handle on the hard and soft costs associated with document technology.

The survey also found that implementing content management software, including online collaboration tools, was called out as a top priority. 50 percent of those surveyed predict that more hard copy documents will be scanned over the next three to five years, helping to save money and increase security through digital document archiving and storage.

The survey report cited document management, electronic records management, imaging capabilities and digital document archiving and storage as ways organizations could save time and money. More than half of the survey participants were from large businesses and said they believe outsourcing the management of document technology could help make their IT staff become more efficient and reduce costs.

These days, businesses of all sizes need to manage documents more carefully. VARs can help ease the burden for their customers with the Panasonic KV-S1025C Duplex Color Workgroup Scanner.

Government regulations such as the Patriot Act, HIPAA and Sarbanes-Oxley require that businesses capture data from documents and ID cards and then store it in a secure, orderly manner. Smaller businesses, especially, have been hit hard with the new compliance rules, since they typically lack the staff to handle the extra workload. That’s where the under-$1,100 Panasonic KV-S1025C scanner can step in by automating data capture.

The KV-S1025C has double-exposure technology that scans both sides of a document at once and combines the content into one electronic image. Most duplex scanners output each side of a document as a separate image, with no correlation between the two sides. Manually linking the front and back data is a time-consuming, laborious step, which the KV-S1025C eliminates. The unit can scan two-sided color, grayscale and monochrome documents in one pass and output the data as a single TIFF, PDF, JPEG or bitmap image.

The KV-S1025C can handle most types of media, including ID cards, NCR forms, onion-skin paper and forms up to 100 inches in length, such as EKGs. It will do automatic scanning of mixed batches of ID cards with different sizes and thicknesses, such as driver’s licenses, insurance cards and credit cards.

A typical scenario would be in health-care, where a patient must present a driver’s license, primary and secondary insurance cards, release and consent forms, and so on. The KV-S1025C can process all of these forms. The scanner automatically identifies color and monochrome documents, so there’s no need for presorting, and the roller system is designed to prevent double-feeds and eliminate missing scans.

A fast performer, the KV-S1025C can scan pages at 26 pages per minute (ppm) at 200 dpi, which equates to 52 images per minute (ipm) for double-sided documents. The scanner has a maximum optical resolution of 600 dpi. Multistream technology allows both a monochrome image and a color image to be saved for each scan. The monochrome image can be used for optical character recognition (OCR) and the color image for filing purposes. That effectively doubles the scanner’s output to 52 ppm and 104 ipm. The unit, which activates automatically when documents are loaded, has a high-speed USB 2.0 interface for plug-and-play operation and a 480 Mbps transfer rate.

Sporting a compact form factor, the KV-S1025C measures 12.5 inches wide, 7.6 inches deep and 6.8 inches high and weighs less than 9 pounds, so it’s ideal for placement on desks. The maintenance-free scanner automatically eliminates vertical lines and artifacts in scans caused by scratches on the CCD lens, such as from staples. Nonetheless, the CCD lens is easily replaced to avoid downtime.

Many features help improve scanned image quality. Automatic background color smoothing eliminates variations in background color to improve clarity and reduce JPEG output file size. Blank pages are also automatically deleted during scanning to further reduce the scanned file size. The scanner can eliminate reds, greens and blues from preprinted forms, and its multicolor dropout capability lets any color or color range be selected for removal, improving OCR processing.

In addition, the KV-S1025C automatically corrects skewing. An auto-erasure feature securely eliminates image data after the data has been transmitted. The product comes with ISIS and TWAIN drivers, document capture and OCR software, and a USB 2.0 cable. The scanner carries a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $1,049.