The AIIM Blog
Keep your finger on the pulse of Intelligent Information Management with industry news, trends, and best practices.
Capture and Imaging | Enterprise Search | Sharepoint and Office 365
There are many methods of capture and search that have been refined to allow users to find the right information they're looking for in traditional document management. Below are eight methods that are useful in SharePoint. Some of them are common to all document management systems, and some are specific to SharePoint.
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Capture and Imaging | Document Management
"Should I buy or rent OCR capabilities?" This is a common question businesses ask themselves when they're starting to get serious about their capture strategy. If you're wondering if you should purchase a document management application for your data extraction and forms processing or outsource the job to a service bureau, the answer is a dissatisfying "Well, it depends." Answering this question should include making a solid business case that includes a cost-benefit analysis using a formula like Net Present Value (NPV) or Internal Rate of Return (IRR) to determine the return on investment. However, the answer usually comes down to the company's philosophy of building versus renting. The renting companies believe in focusing on their core competency and reducing costs while outsourcing anything that falls outside core functions. The building companies are often more focused on maintaining control. The following should be considered in terms of answering the in-house vs. outsourcing question for your organization. Here are eight things you should consider when deciding to buy or rent OCR capabilities:
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Making an ECM implementation successful requires planning and attention to detail. The best way to create the right solution is to identify organizational goals and priorities. Learn how to manage a successful implementation in our free guide.
Hailed as the way in which we can breathe life into our static, paper documents, Optical Character Recognition (OCR) has made strides in the recent decades – becoming a staple module in just about every software package managing documents - From Nuance’s PaperPort to EMC’s Documentum. OCR itself can mean various things. Wikipedia offers this definition: "… the mechanical or electronic translation of images of handwritten, typewritten or printed text (usually captured by a scanner) into machine-editable text (2008)." While many estimate the accuracy levels for OCR engines can reach 98 or 99 percent, it has been my experience this is very difficult to achieve in most commercially-available software suites for the small-to-medium businesses (SMBs). Many variables can affect the accuracy levels of output, ranging from document condition to readability.
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Scanning speed The most common question that gets asked during the sales process for a scanner is, "How fast is it?" Almost everyone thinks that the higher the speed of the scanner, the higher the output. The fact is, this is not always the case. Beyond a certain level, the scanner will be idle due to the inability to feed documents at that speed. This is especially true when scanning mixed documents, where it becomes impossible to use the scanner to full speed. The scanning speed is measured either in ppm (pages per minute) for simplex scanners or ipm (images per minute) for duplex scanners. Today, there are scanners ranging from 20 ppm to 200 ppm. Unless the purchaser is an internal or external service bureau (or a similar operation of scanning very high volumes of the same document type), the lower speed ranges are likely sufficient for many.
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Capture and Imaging | Document Management | Enterprise Content Management (ECM)
Remember when placing the blue recycling bin next to the copier and encouraging employees to duplex their print jobs made you feel like you were doing your part to help the environment? The sustainability expectations set for corporations today have never been higher, and many are realizing that the benefits of going green with Enterprise Content Management (ECM) extend beyond being viewed as a good corporate citizen to significant cost savings and increased worker productivity.
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Capture and Imaging | Document Management
As leading economic indicators continue to signal a global economic slowdown, companies are looking for practical steps to take – such as lowering costs and streamlining operations – in order to weather the storm and achieve a competitive edge in the eventual recovery. At the same time, recent industry research shows that businesses also want to be more environmentally responsible. There are several document management practices that can help companies reach both their environmental and cost-reduction goals. From the sustainability perspective, these practices can significantly reduce the use of paper, thereby saving trees, gas in shipping the paper, physical space to store it, and halting the eventual destruction of many files that end up in a landfill. According to the Environmental Paper Network, “If, for example, the United States cut its office paper use by roughly 10 percent, or 540,000 tons, greenhouse gases would fall by 1.6 million tons. This is the equivalent of taking 280,000 cars off the road for a year.”
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