Home | Contact Info | Contact Us

Porter-Roth Associates
Document Management Consulting
Consulting in Electronic Document Management Solutions and Technologies

Document Imaging | Document Management | Workflow | Records Management

Consulting Services

Client List

Publications

Training&Seminars

Example Projects

Resume

Hints&Tips

Resources

 

Document Management Hints & Tips

The following hints & tips will help with your project effort:

  1. A "document" can be many pages. Specify what a document means.

  2. A "page" can be either 1 sided or 2 sided - this can double the "image" count - so ensure that you specify whether a "page" is 1 or 2 sided.

  3. 1 page, front only, black & white text, when scanned at 200 dots per inch = 50 Kbytes when compressed.

  4. What do you do with "sticky notes" on pages, if they contain information - remember they will hide information underneath when scanned.

  5. As part of the project costs, you have to decide if the "paper" being scanned will be returned to the original folder in the original order. If so, you have to "cost" the reassembly process into the project.

  6. Consider the "life" of the storage media and the storage technology versus the life expectancy of your documents. This is very important if your documents need to be stored for 20+ years.

  7. Check Federal and State laws for electronic document storage legislation. If you are within the SEC's jurisdiction, ensure you review the SEC guidelines for optical scanning and storage.

  8. Document management technologies are not a panacea for all your problems with paper and electronic documents. In fact, adoption of an electronic document management system will most likely exacerbate your current problems, if the basic project foundation has not been laid.

  9. Start with a small project or one department and build on that success. Don't try to implement a document management project across the board, few projects of that scale have worked and many have failed.

  10. Document management technology is ever changing. New vendors and "technologies" are appearing and disappearing rapidly. Ensure your project keeps up with these changes.

If you have a suggestion that you would like to share with the world, send it in and we will post it here for you. Try to keep the items short. We reserve the right to edit when necessary. If you want credit, ensure you say, "Give me Credit!"