A quick look into the World of Document Scanning & Indexing
The idea here is to have a bash at introducing you to the world of document scanning (or document imaging, as it is sometimes called).
Many people have this notion that, in order to convert their paper documents to digital images, all they need to do is buy a scanner and connect it to their “computer”, use the “software” that comes with the scanner and, voila, they are off and running…
That is sometimes true when you are scanning your private documents or photographs, but it is seldom true when it comes to document management in business. Unfortunately, many only find this out once they have bought all the other components and are ready to begin capturing their documents. They then find out that they have no budget left to do it properly and so look for the cheapest approach. As usual, as with anything in life, you get what you pay for and the project is probably doomed to failure.
On the other hand, doing your research can be overwhelming, as you start encountering:
(And this isn’t close to being all of them…)
- document logging and tracking, prep, post-prep, batch headers
- structured, semi-structured and unstructured documents
- dynamic, static and legal documents
- 2-D and 3-D barcodes, patchcodes, separator sheets
- forward scanning, back scanning, centralised scanning, distributed scanning, bureau scanning,
outsourced scanning - flatbeds, ADFs, MFDs, handhelds, camera-based
- ISIS, TWAIN, simplex, duplex
- auto-rotation, deskew, despeckle, ACD, cropping, dithering, drop-out colours, endorsing
- quality control, form recognition, data capture, forms processing, data entry, CADE, ODBC, data extraction, indexing
- double keying, zonal locators, validation, verification, thresholds
- OCR, ICR, IMR, MICR, full text, fuzzy logic, metadata
- greyscale, bitmaps, pixels, bpi, bpp, thumbnails
- blobs, BMPs, JPEGs, PDFs, TIFFs, compression ratios
- SANs, NASs, WORMs, DASD, RAID, CD/R, CD-ROM, DVD
- document control, document management, content management, revisioning, document archiving, records management, retention policies, taxonomies
- collaboration, BPA, BPM, workflow
Our intention is to try to shed some light on these and other issues (hopefully making it a little more interesting than it looks…)
So sit back and let’s see where this journey into Document Scanning takes us…