What Is Document Capture?

Document Capture is just what it says: Capturing documents and content that can be used in everyday business processes.

With a document management system, document capture is the application employed to create a secure digitised document from information in various formats, including paper, that can be filed and  routed electronically. When done correctly, these digital copies can be used as the legal original copy. This will be covered in a future blog, (watch this space).

Scanning Documents

There are a number of quite sophisticated scanning subsystems that can be employed to capture both documents and content. Typically, scanning documents creates an image of the document in a format that can be viewed on a computer, a tablet or any other handheld device. Most people are familiar with PDF files. Other formats are used for document management too, such as TIF and PNG.

These scanning subsystems can also be configured to capture content that can be extracted using OCR, ICR or OMR technologies so that the content information can be used during the document life-cycle.

Importing Documents

Document capture is not just the process of scanning paper documents. Capture also takes into account electronic documents. For example, you can create a PDF from an MS-Word file. Although the MS-Word document is already an electronic file, you might want to have the original Word document or a PDF in your document management system for future reference depending on the business rules or process being undertaken.

Remember that the power of a document management system is the ability to tie all your documents together so that you can search and retrieve the right information at the right time when you most need it. Therefore,  In addition to the file cabinets of paper documents, you have large numbers of important electronic documents created by various applications including emails and email attachments. These electronic documents are just as important as the paper files, maybe even more important in many instances and need to be managed properly

An Example

For example: Records in your accounting system will probably not be imported into your document management system. Yet, these electronic records are critical to having a successful and efficient document management system.

There are two ways to accommodate these records with document management. One way is to link to the accounting system to pull in the data from these records. This is commonly used in indexing new documents providing accurate and consistent index terms and reducing the amount of manual data entry at the point of input. The second way is to have the accounting system link to the document management system and display the information needed right from the customer records. In this way the accounts payable team uses the accounting system for their work and when they need the supporting documentation they click on a customised link and the accounting system requests the supporting information from the document management system resulting increased efficiency and productivity.

So why not start managing your documents today? 

More information is available from Hershey UK. Why not get in touch for an online demonstration and discussion of your document needs.