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Services Client List Publications Training&Seminars Example Projects Resume Hints&Tips Resources	Document Imaging Tutorial Paper is at the heart of many business processes. Whether it is a letter from a customer, a completed application form, or a document that is being circulated within a department, business runs on paper. Document imaging is a technology that allows you to scan a piece of paper and store it digitally recalling it and viewing whenever needed from the convenience of your desktop workstation/PC. Given the right to view the document and its location, any user on a network can "see" the document and the document may be sent to other users not on the immediate network via e-mail or the document can be faxed directly from the storage server. The scanning process basically turns the page into a series of "bits or dots" that represent black or white portions of the page being scanned - a fax machine uses the same scanning technology. (Documents that are faxed can be saved and indexed directly into the system without the need to print out the fax and scan it back in.) Once the paper has been scanned, it needs to be indexed so that not only you, but anyone in your group can find that imaged document in the database. For example, for a credit application, you may index the document using first and last name, SSN, account number and account type. Scanners come in a wide variety of sizes, speeds, functionality, and prices. Scanners may or may not include scanning software but all independent scanning software programs will (usually) work with all of the scanners on the market. Selection of a scanner and the software is highly dependent on the paper to be scanned and other factors such as the 1- or 2-sided, condition of the paper, color of the paper, and a myriad of factors. While this sounds pretty simple, it can get quite complex very quickly when we consider that most businesses operate with thousands or millions of documents. In addition, a customer folder (for example) may contain applications, letters, legal documents such as a promissory note, photographs, and a variety of other documents. In a folder that is hundreds of pages long, it may become necessary to navigate through the folder by secondary indices that in essence serve as "tabs" in physical file folder. It can also become absolutely necessary to be able to index the documents quickly and accurately when we are dealing with high volumes of paper (accuracy is always a must whether it is one page or one million pages!) For example, if you have to index 5000 pages per day and each page takes one person 30 seconds to index, it would take that person: 30 sec. X 5000 = 150,000 seconds / 60 (sec.) = 2500 minutes If we assume that a typical workday is 6.5 hours or 390 minutes, it would take one person 6.4 work days to index our original 5000 documents. Not to bring it up, but....by the time the indexing was completed for the first day, there would be 27,000 more documents queued up for indexing. To keep up with the daily input, you would need to have 7 people indexing or, you would need to speed up the indexing, which is possible with some fancy technology that is available. One of the best ways to cut down on the indexing time is to determine whether you have too many indexing levels. Generally speaking, many companies over index their documents with index values that are seldom or never used when searching for a document. However, indexing is not the only activity that takes place. Most documents do not come into the company all ready to be scanned. Time is spent preparing the documents by opening the envelop or removing the documents from a file folder, removing staples, paperclips, sticky notes, etc. from the pages. It is entirely possible that some of the documents are not in great shape and have to have the creases or dog ears straightened out and you may have to tape documents that have been torn. To help you understand how document imaging helps, 1 file drawer holds about 2500 document pages so that a 4 drawer file cabinet holds 10,000 pages. 1 CD-ROM can hold about 10,000 page (CD = 650 megabytes). So for a quick rule of thumb, a basic CD-ROM can hold one four drawer file cabinet when the documents have been scanned. BTW, a DVD holds 4.6 gigabytes (and more depending on how it is configured). A single scanned page (1-sided) is about 50,000 bytes so that 1 gigabyte (1,073,741,824 bytes) can hold approximately 21, 474 images. High-end document imaging storage systems can hold 30 gigabytes per disk with virtually unlimited storage capability. Modern storage systems can combine magnetic disks or RAID systems combined with optical disks, for compliance reasons, and deliver documents to a desktop in sub-second response times. Return to Services

Document Management Consulting

Consulting in Electronic Document Management Solutions and Technologies

Document Imaging | Document Management | Workflow | Compliance

Services

Document Imaging Tutorial

Paper is at the heart of many business processes. Whether it is a letter from a customer, a completed application form, or a document that is being circulated within a department, business runs on paper. Document imaging is a technology that allows you to scan a piece of paper and store it digitally recalling it and viewing whenever needed from the convenience of your desktop workstation/PC. Given the right to view the document and its location, any user on a network can "see" the document and the document may be sent to other users not on the immediate network via e-mail or the document can be faxed directly from the storage server.

The scanning process basically turns the page into a series of "bits or dots" that represent black or white portions of the page being scanned - a fax machine uses the same scanning technology. (Documents that are faxed can be saved and indexed directly into the system without the need to print out the fax and scan it back in.) Once the paper has been scanned, it needs to be indexed so that not only you, but anyone in your group can find that imaged document in the database. For example, for a credit application, you may index the document using first and last name, SSN, account number and account type.

Scanners come in a wide variety of sizes, speeds, functionality, and prices. Scanners may or may not include scanning software but all independent scanning software programs will (usually) work with all of the scanners on the market. Selection of a scanner and the software is highly dependent on the paper to be scanned and other factors such as the 1- or 2-sided, condition of the paper, color of the paper, and a myriad of factors.

While this sounds pretty simple, it can get quite complex very quickly when we consider that most businesses operate with thousands or millions of documents. In addition, a customer folder (for example) may contain applications, letters, legal documents such as a promissory note, photographs, and a variety of other documents. In a folder that is hundreds of pages long, it may become necessary to navigate through the folder by secondary indices that in essence serve as "tabs" in physical file folder.

It can also become absolutely necessary to be able to index the documents quickly and accurately when we are dealing with high volumes of paper (accuracy is always a must whether it is one page or one million pages!) For example, if you have to index 5000 pages per day and each page takes one person 30 seconds to index, it would take that person:

30 sec. X 5000 = 150,000 seconds / 60 (sec.) = 2500 minutes

If we assume that a typical workday is 6.5 hours or 390 minutes, it would take one person 6.4 work days to index our original 5000 documents. Not to bring it up, but....by the time the indexing was completed for the first day, there would be 27,000 more documents queued up for indexing. To keep up with the daily input, you would need to have 7 people indexing or, you would need to speed up the indexing, which is possible with some fancy technology that is available. One of the best ways to cut down on the indexing time is to determine whether you have too many indexing levels. Generally speaking, many companies over index their documents with index values that are seldom or never used when searching for a document.

However, indexing is not the only activity that takes place. Most documents do not come into the company all ready to be scanned. Time is spent preparing the documents by opening the envelop or removing the documents from a file folder, removing staples, paperclips, sticky notes, etc. from the pages. It is entirely possible that some of the documents are not in great shape and have to have the creases or dog ears straightened out and you may have to tape documents that have been torn.

To help you understand how document imaging helps, 1 file drawer holds about 2500 document pages so that a 4 drawer file cabinet holds 10,000 pages. 1 CD-ROM can hold about 10,000 page (CD = 650 megabytes). So for a quick rule of thumb, a basic CD-ROM can hold one four drawer file cabinet when the documents have been scanned. BTW, a DVD holds 4.6 gigabytes (and more depending on how it is configured).

A single scanned page (1-sided) is about 50,000 bytes so that 1 gigabyte (1,073,741,824 bytes) can hold approximately 21, 474 images. High-end document imaging storage systems can hold 30 gigabytes per disk with virtually unlimited storage capability. Modern storage systems can combine magnetic disks or RAID systems combined with optical disks, for compliance reasons, and deliver documents to a desktop in sub-second response times.

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