Document Imaging - Delivering Efficiency for the Digital Age

By Bill Thomas
From my “DocuBLOG” column
Bill works for USA-ONE Interactive

Document imaging technology helps businesses finally begin to deliver on what over half a century ago IBM scientists first touted: the paperless office. With the aid of document imaging, businesses today can streamline operations by replacing many hard copy documents with digitalized ones. Through document imaging faxes, emails and regular file documents can be digitalized, saving space, time and money for the organization.

Basically, document imaging is a matter of scanning files and paper documents, then having them converted into digital images that can be stored in Tagged Image File Format (TIFF) or digital files on your network server, computer hard drive, CD, DVD, or Document Management System. Often organizations prefer to have their document imaging stored off-site with a third party provider. This can be an excellent choice that offers greater security for important company documents and reduces employees’ workload, freeing them up to handle other tasks.

Another advantage of document imaging is the capacity it offers for using optical character recognition (OCR) on scanned documents. Using OCR an employee can search a document for specific text blocks and then copy them to another application — a real time saver!

One of the great advantages of using document imaging is the ability to scan in a faxed or paper form and then be able to fill it out online — even check boxes. Once complete, the form can be sent via email.

Other advantages include:

• Document imaging makes it possible to add comments to a scanned document on your computer and then publish it by email to others.
• Document imaging allows anyone in your office to circulated scanned documents as email or as an Internet fax.
• Document imaging permits the reorganizing and pagination of a scanned document and then the distribution of it via email.
• Document imaging lets you copy images or text from scanned pieces and insert them into other documents.

In all, document imaging cuts paper costs, handling costs and storage costs and that leads to a more efficient office and workforce. And, once a document is scanned, any authorized person can access it wherever an Internet connection is available.

Clearly, while document imaging does not fully eliminate the need for hard copy documents, it does take a giant leap toward a more efficient, more earth-friendly office.