One of the questions we are often asked is “how is ScanSearch any different than Google Drive, Dropbox, or MS OneDrive”? 

Google Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive are great cloud document repositories for electronic documents such as spreadsheets, word documents, and Searchable PDF documents. All of these types of documents have searchable text as part of the file so you can search for them on content within the document. 

A scanned document, on the other hand, is just a picture of a document. There is no embedded text to search on. In fact, the only way to find a document is to literally search by the file name or use some sort of file folder structure. 

In either of these cases there is a significant possibility of inconsistent filing of the documents which renders the documents and information on them useless.

In other words, there are basically two types of PDF documents:

““Image-only” Scanned PDFs

When scanning hard copy documents on MFPs and office scanners, or when converting a camera image, jpg, tiff or screenshot into a PDF, the content is “locked” in a snapshot-like image.

Such image-only PDF documents contain just the scanned/photographed images of pages, without an underlying text layer. Consequently, image-only PDF files are not searchable, and their text usually cannot be modified or marked up. An “image-only” PDF can be made searchable by applying OCR with which a text layer is added, normally under the page image.

Searchable PDFs

Searchable PDFs usually result through the application of OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to scanned PDFs or other image-based documents. During the text recognition process, characters and the document structure are analyzed and “read”. A text layer is added to the image layer, usually placed underneath. Such PDF files are almost indistinguishable from the original documents and are fully searchable. Text in searchable PDF documents can be selected, copied, and marked up.” (Abbyy 2023)

With ScanSearch, the scanned documents are converted into documents that can be searched and retrieved by the content on them. They are processed using the latest OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology. Since every word, phrase and field of data is searchable, you have an extremely robust way to get to your scanned documents all in one place and in a bank-level secure environment.

Posted on: February 17, 2023  by Matt Dragatsis

Why scan your company or department’s documents and store them online with ScanSearch? It’s all about having a certain level of access to what is on those documents. The traditional method of storing documents in filing cabinets or worse, bankers boxes, you physically need to handle the paper document to have access to the information on it. Here is a real world example: 

On any given day, in any Accounts Payable department, a clerk gets a phone call from a vendor who is asking a question about a particular invoice that was sent to them. A lot of times it is just to verify that they received it. “I am just calling to verify that you have received invoice number INV-7843”. This is called document visibility and unless the invoice has been fully entered into the AP system no one has the answer to this unless they physically go to the pile of un-entered invoices and thumb through them to see if it is there. They then need to call the vendor back, hopefully get them on the phone, and confirm. This is just one reason you would need to get in front of an invoice….there are many. 

Back to our original question. If you scanned that pile of invoices in and uploaded them to ScanSearch, those documents would be available, online, within minutes and when that call came in, the question could be answered immediately. No getting out of your chair. No thumbing through the pile of invoices. No calling back with the answer to their question. In reality, that whole process could take 10 minutes or more, not to mention the disruption to what you are currently working on. How many times could the need to retrieve an invoice happen in a month? You may say most or our invoices are received as PDFs via email. Well, you still need to search through emails looking for the sender who sent it and this would exclude all paper invoices. You can set up a rule in your AP email box to forward to ScanSearch automatically so all your invoices will be in one place.

Your scanned documents and PDFs are really just pictures of non-searchable words. ScanSearch brings the documents to life with full text search capabilities. Search by any word or phrase once uploaded to the highly secure cloud repository. 

For more information visit ScanSearch.com

Posted on: March 2, 2021 by Mike Hurley

The most expensive part of an Enterprise Content Management system (ECM) is not the software. It’s not the implementation, training or project management. Not the servers, scanners, integrations or web services either. No, not even the support, maintenance or upgrades.  After 25 years working with companies on ECM, workflow and Intelligent Capture (OCR) I have come to realize that the most expensive part of these systems is something rarely discussed. The real cost for most ECM and workflow systems is fingers of gold on keyboards.

Gold Fingers

Gold Fingers? Yes. Fingers touching keyboards to data enter indexes and keywords are one of the most expensive, yet rarely discussed, elements of ECM and workflow systems. Most ECM and Workflow vendors, consultants and customers rarely consider data entry in their cost benefit analysis, but the numbers are compelling. In fact, even a small staff of three to index documents typically costs over $150,000 when salaries, benefits and other costs are factored in. But that’s only part of the cost, data entry slows down mission critical processes and can introduce keying errors that can wreak havoc on downstream processes. Slowing processes and introducing errors most certainly impacts impact customer experience negatively.

1 in 67 Characters are Keyed in Error

One in sixty-seven characters is keyed in error. That does not seem too bad until you consider the “1-10-100 rule”. This rule states that if it takes 1 unit of work to complete a task on an item in the mailroom, it will take 10 units to correct that error mid-process.  If the item makes it all the way through the process to the end and fails, the rule goes on to state that it will take 100 times the effort to correct it. Thinking about this in terms of dollars, keying errors early in the process can cost 10X or 100X the errors that make it into an ECM or any other system.  Those fingers on keyboards really are gold. So why are these costs not figured into most systems?

The Shiny New Object

My experience is that our obsession with technology fuels a “tools first” approach to problem solving. Let’s face it, since the caveman sharpened his first axe, we have been fascinated by tools. Some are mesmerizing.  I recall going to a local Chicago Nabisco factory on a school trip and watching Oreos being made by the thousands by machines that were hypnotizing (#bestfieldtripever). Tools are shiny and new. They hold out the hope of a “silver bullet” – that ONE thing that might finally solve the problem. But the truth is that most tools need much more.  They need people and processes surrounding them to be effective and efficient. Many ECM and workflow buyers, bedazzled by the possibilities of these new tools, fail to consider implications of keying, quality errors or downstream costs. Most vendors and consultants are complicit in facilitating tools to be purchased and implemented without the hard work of a real (bean-counter approved) cost benefit analysis. Every self-respecting accountant knows that people costs and process changes must be factored into a return on investment calculation to understand a tool’s true value.

The Missing Link in Most ECM and Workflow Systems

The good news is that an approach that gained popularity in the 1990’s has, within the last five years, been cleverly combined with artificial intelligence and machine learning to address this problem. It offers the realistic possibility to reduce data entry by over 90% while trapping expensive errors early in the process. The combined technologies are called Intelligent Capture and represent taking the best of Optical Character Recognition (OCR), Handwriting Recognition (ICR) and partnering them up with AI to create a truly intelligent component missing in most ECM and workflow systems. The combination is remarkable and can radically reduce the cost and complexity of ECM and workflow processes. For example, we just completed a project that recognized handwritten enrollment forms with over 87% accuracy. After some tuning and machine learning, this solution will likely reduce data entry by well over 90% with higher quality than the previous process.

Reducing The Gold Content in Data Entry

I commonly hear the “It Ain’t Broke” story.  You may have heard it too. It goes something like this: “Why should I spend time on Intelligent Capture? My ECM and workflow seems to be working fine. Nobody is screaming at me. Plus, change is tough. Intelligent Capture sounds like change to me, plus we’re in a pandemic. It ain’t broke. We ain’t fixing it.”

Sorry to relay here that most systems are indeed broke. Additionally, the toughest change to deal with is the change that is unexpectedly thrust upon you by a competitor or market conditions. You need not look further than the recent unprecedented frigid weather in Texas as an example of an unanticipated event causing unexpected danger. Now apply that kind of event to your organization and you might find your ECM and workflow systems unprepared. Approaches like Intelligent Capture provide process agility for times when change stresses your company. They also can dramatically reduce entry costs and the 10-100X increase in downstream process costs that can be caused by errors.

Take the Golden Fingers out of your ECM and Workflow with BRYJ

Interested in learning more? Reduce the costs of entry and errors in your ECM and workflow systems. Give us a call. We offer assessments of existing Capture, ECM and Workflow systems to identify the opportunities to reduce costs with Intelligent Capture and can help you implement changes if they’re needed.  If you are interested in discussing, or if you simply have a comment, reach out to Mike Hurley at mike@bryjinc.com.

Joe Alvarez
301.840.6264 – Space, Document Management & Asset Tracking (RFID) Professional.
Published Apr 16, 2020

Research firm Gartner estimates that as much as 3% of a company’s revenue is spent on paper. Copy paper, note paper, invoices, letters, file folders…it all adds up, and it’s easy to quantify. But that’s just the hard costs. What is rarely calculated are the hidden costs all that paper generates.

A few statistics from a PriceWaterhouseCoopers study:

· 8 hours – the amount of time an employee spends managing paper documents each week

· $122 – the cost of finding a single lost document

· 750 – the number of lost paper documents per year, per mid-size business

There’s a dollar figure attached to this kind of lost productivity. Even though the math may not show up on a P&L spreadsheet, lost documents alone can be calculated to cost the average mid-size business $91,500 per year.

And that’s before calculating the cost of office space to store all those documents. Paper is undeniably bulky. Just 250 standard file cabinets take up 2,500 square feet. That adds up to a significant sum, too: $135,000 per year, on average.

Knowing those costs could make you think twice about using – and retaining – all that paper. But do you have a choice?

Imaging is the alternative. Converting paper documents to digital documents saves businesses the cost of all that storage space for physical documents. The contents of those 250 file cabinets, after conversion, will fit onto a single hard drive. With imaged documents safely stored on a drive, lost documents are a thing of the past, as is the cost of finding those lost documents.

Even better, businesses can take advantage of the cost savings of a remote workforce. Digital documents, unlike paper documents, can be shared readily with members of a distributed team. And remote teams require less office space, adding to the cost savings.

Of course paper still provides a valuable function even in the digital era. People have a positive response to information presented on paper, and they absorb and retain that information longer. Sales and marketing materials, for example, have a greater impact if they’re presented on paper.

But for many other areas of business operations, imaged documents present a significant value in the form of reduced real estate costs and improved productivity. Take a look at how your enterprise uses paper, uncover the hidden costs, and make a profitable move to imaging.

Joe Alvarez, president of National Office Systems Inc., has over 20 years’ experience helping companies and government agencies to bridge the gap between an organization’s processes and technology when considering storage and asset management systems. Since 1976, National Office Systems (NOS) has been the leading provider of the most affordable and comprehensive storage solutions (high density mobile shelving, automated storage and retrieval, stationary shelving, biometric secure access cabinets) and document management systems. NOS saves money for businesses when they move to a new space, showing them how building smaller spaces and leasing less space provides rapid return on investment for capital equipment projects.

Original article

Joe AlvarezClick
Joe Alvarez
301.840.6264 – Space, Document Management & Asset Tracking (RFID) Professional.
Published Apr 16, 2020

March 29, 2021

Storing paper documents for your business can seem simple at first, but over time you will begin to see the overwhelming document overload as well as a drop in your business productivity. According to a Gartner study, one out of every 20 documents is lost or misplaced and companies spend approximately 25 hours recreating those lost documents. Think of all your team could accomplish with that extra time —and the money you could save in labor costs.

Exactly what is the true cost of keeping your paper documents? And how do you avoid it? These are questions that we hear a lot of from our customers. Keep reading to see exactly why keeping your paper documents can be incredibly costly for your business, and how implementing a digital document management system can greatly reduce those costs.

Overall Cost

On average it costs about $4.82 to handle a single paper document and It is estimated that US companies will waste about $8 billion every year on managing paper. If you think about all the paper documents you store within your business and need to retrieve on a daily basis, those numbers start to add up fast. If you keep your documents stored in an offsite storage facility, retrieval costs alone can be expensive. What about when a file goes missing? How long would it take you to find it? Having your team thumb through hundreds of documents just to find one is not what you want your team to be putting their well paid time and effort towards.

You need to also take into consideration the upkeep of storing paper documents as well. According to a Gartner study, each four-drawer file cabinet holds an average of 10-12,000 documents, takes up 9 square feet of floor space and each one costs $1,500 per year. Also the upkeep of printers and faxing machines come into play as well. All of these expenses and time not only hurts the growth of your business, but also puts you at risk of losing important documents.

Lost Documents

Think of how many times your business had misplaced a document, or how many times you couldn’t find a document and had to replace it. According to a Gartner study, approximately 25 hours to recreate each lost document. This is time that could be used toward other, more important business efforts. With 90% of a business’s information stored in documents, you don’t want to put all your trust into a filing system that isn’t very efficient or reliable. What if there was a flood or fire? According to a Gartner study, more than 70% of today’s businesses would fail within three weeks if they suffered a catastrophic loss of paper-based records due to fire or flood. You may be thinking to yourself, “Well that won’t happen to my business!” Unfortunately, that’s a risky way of thinking. You want to be proactive and make sure that if something like that were to happen, your documents are secure, safe, and easily accessible.

Retrieval Time 

One main issue we see with our customers is the retrieval time of paper documents. On average it takes around 10 minutes per paper document to retrieve, copy and re-file.  When working with paper documents, no matter how organized your filing system is, you will run into the problem of not being able to retrieve documents in a timely manner. Say you need to find an invoice for a certain client and it’s not in its normal filing cabinet? You have already spent time looking for it and now you will have to track down this document which increases your retrieval time and can upset your clients.

Security & Audits

Your business may keep certain paper documents due to legal reasons and/or for possible audits. According to an AIIM research, 62% of businesses are strongly reliant on their file-shares. These types of documents are extremely important and by storing them in a filing cabinet or an off-site facility, you are making it more difficult for your business to retrieve them in case of emergency. For example, imagine your business is going through an audit and production must halt until the audit is completed. If you and your co-workers are spending hours going through each filing cabinet to find the exact documents the auditor needs, you are keeping your business from moving forward with production, thereby exponentially losing money.

Overall Efficiency  

Each business is different when it comes to their document lifecycle. You may have processes set in place for when a document is created it moves from one department to the next. However, with paper documents you would need to either hand it in person, fax it over to the correct department, or scan and email it over with the other department reprinting it. Especially with many people working from home nowadays, these processes may not be the most efficient way of moving your documents around.

As a business you want your processes to be streamlined and customized to your business needs. By keeping  paper documents, you are holding back your businesses efficiency and could potentially hurt your business in the long run. The International Data Corporation found that a business with 1,000 employees wastes $2.5 million to $3.5 million a year chasing documents. You may not see the problem within your business right now, but over time if you keep storing paper documents your business will run into at least one of these issues if you are not proactive.

What Can Be Done?

So what exactly can be done to minimize your paper documents? The best path to go down is to start your journey to become paperless with a document management system (DMS) or Enterprise Content Management system (ECM). With a DMS or ECM, you are able to:

• Build a secure and trusted repository of accessible documents
• Drastically reduce the cost of off-site paper document storage and per-page retrieval costs with document scanning
• Address both internal and external auditor’s requests in a timely manner
• Prevent fire, flood, or theft from putting your company out of business
• Track and get approval on work as it traverses departments
• And more!

Over time you will be able to see the ROI on implementing a document management system through reduced labor and physical storage costs. Your business will become more efficient, save money, and reduce the risk of losing documents.

With Optix, we will help you start your process of becoming paperless with a document management system. Our document scanning, document management, workflow automations, and more will help your business grow without the hassle of storing paper documents. Still have questions?

K.J. McCorry is CEO of Officiency a business consulting firm based out of Boulder, CO.

Original arlticle

By

Marc Ambasna-Jones

The recovery will be digital, says a recent McKinsey report focusing on how businesses can grow at speed and scale against the backdrop of Covid-19 pandemic-suppressed economies. Nothing unusual there. We’ve all seen the rapid adoption of digital technologies to enable remote and socially distanced workers, but few would have put the paperless office high on the agenda for change.

“Many organisations will need to rapidly reinvent processes that previously required physical documents, to become paperless,” says the report. “Enabling the submission of scanned copies for document verification and supporting contactless servicing capabilities (for example, by creating digital forms to replace physical forms and enabling electronic signature capture) will likely be key priorities.”

This is not the first time paper processes have become a poster child for digital progress, but unlike in previous years, there is now an element of necessity. This is not so much about reducing paper consumption, but more about improving overall document management in an increasingly touchless society. For years, technologies have been capable of reducing paper consumption only to see paper consumption increase.

The key here is the proliferation of data and the management of that data. Paper is increasingly cumbersome within new information processes and organisations are slowly realising the operational value of digitised document management.

According to the Association for Intelligent Information Management (AIIM)’s State of the intelligent information management industry 2021 report, on average, organisations expect the volume of information coming into them to grow from X to 4.5X over the next two years. They expect more than 57% of this information to be unstructured (a contract or a conversation, for example) or semi-structured (such as an invoice or a form).

The problem is that not many businesses are geared up to manage this volume of information, something that Covid-19 exposed as organisations scrambled to manage remote working. While the importance of effective information management may have been recognised in boardrooms, the reality, according to AIIM, is that still too many organisations lack the tools and knowhow.

“Organisations are losing the battle against information chaos and need to rethink outdated manual approaches to information management,” says the report. “Overall, respondents in the AIIM survey give their organisations a grade of C minus (1.64 on a four-point grading scale) in the battle against information chaos.”

This is actually slightly lower than the grade assigned to business/information management alignment. Almost half of participants (46%) graded their efforts at battling information chaos as “needs improvement” or “poor.”

Almost certainly, problems exist because of a lack of insight into the impact of paper-based processes. Knowing how paper is affecting the organisation from a cost and information management perspective is half the battle. Whether it’s monitoring printer use or understanding workflow processes better, organisations need more joined-up thinking.