Facts About Document Image Management Solutions



Company owners should consider switching to Chicago document image management solutions as they can make the administrative side of their business much easier. Digital documents take up no office space, are stored safely, and can be retrieved no matter what disaster hits.

How it works

Chicago document image management firms offer a variety of solutions to their clients. The first step in the process requires the installation of document management software on one of the main company computers. Next, all documents have to be imported, which is typically accomplished through a scanner.

Who Uses It?

Small, mid-size and enterprise businesses from all industries will use a broad range of Chicago document image management systems to organize and control their documents, such as invoices, bills, tax documents, proof of insurance, and employee data. Private citizens will also use integrated document technology to keep important paperwork safe. The files on their computer may include their will, tax returns, receipts, mortgage applications, their resume, etc.

Advantages

Consultants of a Chicago document image management company will gladly point out the fantastic benefits associated with their feature-rich products. Just to name a few:

• The documents are safe, even if a computer has been stolen, or your building burns down. Nobody can access the documents without a password.
• Traditional filing systems are eliminated, and with fewer filing cabinets in the office, more floor space will become available.
• When employees no longer have to waste time looking for misplaced files, productivity will vastly improve. No need to walk back and forth between departments to retrieve paperwork either as everything is stored conveniently on the computer. Chicago document image management services will save business both time and money.

Microsoft Document Imaging OCR Guide



OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition, and is the process of converting written or printed text into a form that can be understood by a computer. Using OCR, your computer can take text from a scanned document and insert it into a text file, or Word document. There are a number of OCR products on the market, but if you already own Microsoft Office, you already own software capable of Optical Character Recognition, Microsoft Document Imaging OCR.

You can use Microsoft OCR to grab text from a scanned document and convert it into a usable Word document. Microsoft Office Document Imaging is able to perform OCR on TIFF files, so step one is to scan your documents. Scan each page in TIFF format. Next, you must load your documents into Microsoft Document Imaging OCR. First, click “Start.” Then, click “All Programs,” “Microsoft Office,” “Microsoft Office Tools,” and finally, “Microsoft Document Imaging.”

In Microsoft OCR, click “File,” then “Insert File.” When asked for the file to be inserted, locate the scanned TIFF file(s) containing your document. If you have scanned each page of your document into a separate TIFF files, you will need to repeat this process for each TIFF file. After the first file is inserted, you will be asked whether you want to insert at the beginning, middle, or end of the document upon inserting each successive page. Make your choice and click “OK.”

Once all the pages of your document have been inserted into Microsoft Document Imaging OCR, you are ready to start the OCR process. Click the “Send Text to Word” button. (Located at the top of the screen in the middle of the menu bar, and appears as a white page with an arrow pointing to a blue “W.”) Press the button and continue.

A dialog box will ask whether you wish to insert all the pages, or just the ones that were selected. One again, make your choice and press “OK,” and the text of your essay will be inserted into a Microsoft Word Document. You are now free to format, edit, and save your new word document. Since many computers today have Office included, the Microsoft Document Imaging OCR is certainly a valuable, if slightly hidden, gem. Stand alone OCR software could set you back a pretty penny and not be any better than that which is included with your Office software. Source: Documentimaginginc dot com, Louis Zhang

Document Management – The Science of Managing Your Documents Electronically



Tired of the conventional practice of managing your documents in their paper form? You have all reason to feel so. Try a Document Management system which will manage your documents, alleviating your need of maintaining logs of papers and files.

Document management is a set of practices which allow a user to manage his paper documents in an electronic form. This takes off quite a bit of headache in terms of maintaining and securing the paper records which anyways are susceptible to natural disasters.

Document Management conceptually is related to Digital Asset Management, Document Imaging and is a subset of Enterprise Content Management System. A document Management System address some or all of the below mentioned areas:

Retrieval – The user’s ability to retrieve electronically stored documents. Filing – The storage of documents once prepared in its electronic form. Security – Confidential and business critical data would need to be secured from unauthorized use. Statutes like HIPAA, GLBA, SOX have laid down rules which would need to be followed by companies that implement Document Management Systems. Archival – Mechanisms which are followed to protect the documents against floods, fires and natural disasters. Having an off-shore back up center or a disaster management/recovery center is one of the solutions to tackle this issue. Retention – “How long does a user retain the stored documents”, “Which documents should be retained” are the most important questions asked here. Distribution – This factor refers to deciding on the group of people to whom a set of documents need to be distributed. Creation and Authentication and Approval
The various components of Document Management are:

Metadata – Mandatory for the storage of each document. It contains the storage date and the identity of the person who has stored it. Users can create the metadata either manually or in an automated manner through the DMS. Integration – This is the facility by which a document can be shared across multiple Document Management Systems. Capture – Use of OCR and various imaging software to present a paper document in an image form. Indexing – Once documents are stored and managed, it is extremely vital that a DMS provides the user the facility to track these documents. Indexing can be done by either unique document identifiers or through metadata in complex searches. Retrieval – Imagine selecting one document of about 10,000 other documents stored in the system. This is known as Retrieval which is made easy by either simple indexing techniques or by the use of complex Boolean expressions.

Many companies have realized the potential of Document management and have created DMS which could be hosted either online (web-based) or be hosted of your desktop. CAD Document Management allowing users to manage their CAD files through a DMS indicates the scope expansion of the Document Management System.