Document Management, Document Indexing & Document Capture, Why Do These Matter?
Andrew Virender | December 19, 2011An organization that handles their documents manually may often have spend too much time in their document capture process. A document comes in through the mail. It is then received by the appropriate person, who typically will then file the document in the correct place. What if you could manage all of your documents digitally?
Scanning documents into the document management system will capture them as digital images that can be viewed from an online portal. The files can then be viewed as PDF documents, or many other formats are available as well. Different formats work best depending on the type and size of the document. TIF format is better with documents with larger volumes, such as large contracts. However, if the contract was created in MS-Word, and the PDF was created directly from Word, the image would be better quality than a scanned document.
You also must remember that not all of your business documents may be black or white. Many different departments collect a large amount of photos as exhibits, evidence, properties, etc. These may be scanned in as TIF documents, JPEG files or even other formats. You must find out which format works best with the type of documents you have.
Aside from scanning documents into the system, you can also import already electronic documents with document management. Say you scanned in a document created in MS-Word and saved it as a PDF. However, you may want that original Word document as well. It’s easy to import that electronic file into an electronic document management system.
Recall that a document management system has the ability to tie all of your documents together. Your organization may have rooms filled with stuffed file cabinets of stored paper documents. Your organization may also have staff that saves all electronic documents on their laptops. With document management, you can tie all of these documents together in one location.
What if you don’t want to import all of your electronic records into the document management system but want to keep them in your, say, accounting system? You can still accommodate these records with document management.
One method is to link the accounting system to pull in the data from these records. An easier and more commonly used way is to link the accounting system (or whichever system it may be) to the document management system, which will display the needed information. The AP team can still do their work in the accounting system, yet request supporting documents from the document management system.
Wanting to streamline your organization? Find the answer to what is document capture and how you can benefit from it? Please visit our site where you can learn about how you can use document management in your organization.





