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.