As documents move through an office environment, they can be converted into PDFs, reformatted, recalculated and edited. They can also be emailed, printed, mailed and released to the public. But because each document is essentially a “corporate record” it is important to retain each one properly throughout every stage of its existence.

Whether you choose to use a document scanning company or handle your document management process in-house, it is wise to come up with a company-wide protocol for the movement of digital files through corporate networks. Most companies will also want to use off-site online document storage for instant retrieval of important records from any PC.

For those who choose the do-it-yourself method, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server has features that will help you implement a fully functional document management system. All aspects of the program work well with familiar applications from Microsoft Office, such as Word, Outlook and Excel.

Larger organizations, and those who require more security features, should consider outsourcing their document management system to an outside vendor. Not only will this free up your employees’ time, it will also ensure that the project is managed properly, all documents are archived, and system updates are maintained on a regular basis.

Technorati Tags: document management, Document Scanning, document scanning new york, Document Storage, emr scanning, medical chart scanning, medical record scanning

In North America, the market for document scanners grew by 7% last year, primarily due to new solutions that reduce costs and improve the overall efficiency of manual processes at an office. A renewed importance has been placed on the document capture technology sector because of the growth in document scanning devices.

Even in this challenging businesses environment, more and more companies are adopting the technology and resources they need to go completely paperless.

Whether you choose a professional document scanning company or try to do it yourself with in-house scanning devices, document scanning and management ultimately give businesses the tools they need to remain competitive. By improving a company’s ROI, they also mitigate risk, reduce overhead, and improve productivity and customer service.

Your document scanning should be done on the right type of scanner, and not every scanner model is suitable for going paperless. Most inexpensive flatbed document scanners lack and automatic document feeder, and cannot process your materials fast enough to be cost-effective. Some high-speed, sheet fed scanners seem right, but they cannot handle books and magazines, and in many cases cannot handle fragile or odd shaped documents.

Your scanner should combine the benefits of both flatbed and sheet-fed scanners, with the ability to process images at the rate of at least 10 per minute. These can run about $800 or more, but on a page-per-minute basis, they will quickly pay for themselves.

Alternatively, a professional document scanning service can offer better ROI, since they not only scan your documents professionally using a variety of appropriate scanners, most can also store and archive your paper records. This type of service works especially well for medical and legal practices.

Technorati Tags: Document Scanning, Document Storage, medical chart scanning, medical record scanning

The electronic scanning of paper documents has been available for awhile, but only recently have document scanning companies begun to offer a full range of document imaging services to fully automate the electronic management of scanned documents. These systems can manage a full range of paper documents, photos and prints.

In its earliest form, electronic document storage was managed with only a limited number of file types. These document imaging solutions were designed to capture, store and index image files. Electronic Document Management (EDM) systems evolved to where they could manage any type of format, as long as it could be stored on a network. Applications were then developed that encompassed electronic documents, auditing capabilities, and tools for collaboration.

Today’s EDM and document imaging service options are designed to include higher storage volume, metadata, versioning, data security, as well as much more sophisticated retrieval capabilities.

Some of the Document Imaging Solutions being offered today include:

o Metadata: For each document, metadata is used to catalog and properly identify the document storage information for later retrieval. Extracted text from the scanned document can also be used a metadata component.

o Integration: Many document imaging services are offering new ways to integrate document management into other applications, which allows the user to open the scanned document, make changes, and save it back to the repository, all without leaving an application.

o Capture: Optical character recognition software (OCR) is used to convert digital images into readable, editable text.

o Indexing: By tracking electronic documents’ metadata or word description, indexing allows users to retrieve stored documents by entering a few words pertaining to their contents.

Electronic document storage and retrieval can be a highly sophisticated method of information management, allowing businesses to operate virtually anywhere, with more reliable data availability and security.

Technorati Tags: Digital Document Imaging, Document Scanning, Document Storage, Medical Records Scanning, Online Document Storage

With the medical industry facing so many challenges from insurance providers and government agencies, it is becoming more important than ever for physicians, hospitals and other medical providers to implement medical records scanning and healthcare document scanning.

It is not only our computerized world and our insatiable need for instant information that will drive providers to begin scanning medical records. It is also a public health issue.

When we consider how important it is for patients’ medical data to be readily available in the event of an emergency, it is amazing how long it has taken for medical records scanning to become commonplace. Today’s document scanning services offer OCR scanning as well, enabling providers to make changes to permanent medical records quite easily, and upload that information into their database.

Just think of how easy it would be to access important medical records if every provider were required to begin medical records scanning. Here are just a few ways that healthcare document scanning would improve the safety and reliability of healthcare in this country.

o A database of medical records would allow pharmacists to see what other medications a patient is taking before filling a prescription, thereby preventing possible overdoses or incompatible medications.

o Medical records scanning would allow a primary doctor to access your chart from any computer, which would give patients access to the right kind of care in an emergency.

o Healthcare document scanning would let insurance companies have immediate access to information on any conditions a patient has had, without the need for lengthy medical forms to be completed via mail.

Now that the US government is considering a national public health insurance program, the need for healthcare document scanning has never been greater. Not only will it cut costs by eliminating time-consuming paperwork, it would allow patients a safer, more reliable, source of medical information in the event of an emergency.

Technorati Tags: Document Scanning, Document Storage, Medical Records Scanning

With technology constantly changing, and new applications being invented every day, the choice of a document scanning company can be somewhat perplexing. Some companies just offer imaging services and OCR scanning, and they stop there. Others add the flexibility of online document storage and full-service document management. And recently, many new companies have started specializing in the scanning of medical records.

So what do you look for in a document scanning company? Well, that will depend on the needs of your business, but here are my top five things to consider:

1. Security needs to be first and foremost, especially if your document scanning company will be able to view sensitive legal or medical documents.

2. Reliability is important too, especially when your business is dependent on the document scanning service to provide online access to their files.

3. OCR scanning is something that should be used whenever possible, particularly for legal practices, museums, and archive specialists who need to access and edit text from scanned documents at a later date.

4. Believe it or not, document storage is becoming the number one reason many businesses begin using a document scanning company. Once they start to realize how easy it is to access scanned documents online, they usually want to have all their documents accessible from any computer. This is why so many document scanning services began offering online document storage as one of their selling points.

5. Archiving is another consideration. Many document scanning companies will not only pick up your documents and drop them off after scanning, they will also offer a secure, temperature controlled storage area so you will not need to store the physical records at your facility. This is an attractive option for many paperwork-heavy businesses, and is a great reason to choose a document scanning service that is within an easy driving distance from your office.

Technorati Tags: Document Scanning, Document Scanning Services, Document Storage, medical record scanning

Ironically, many of these same medical practices regularly utilize cutting edge diagnostic and treatment technologies that didn’t even exist last year but somehow that same forward thinking approach to quality healthcare is absent when it comes to tracking their patients’ medical records.

Why?

It is difficult to say. Perhaps some healthcare providers are unaware of the new technologies involved in medical records scanning even though the “new” technologies have existed for years. Or perhaps they are aware that the digital document imaging industry exists but they are unaware of the fact that it is a substantially more secure way to store and maintain medical records. (Some healthcare providers are even under the false impression that paper records are superior to online document storage with regard to physical damage caused by fire, flood, theft, spills, misplacement, and privacy. The truth, however, is quite the opposite).

Other medical practices are concerned about the cost of digitized document storage. But the fact is that the costs involved with paper storage far surpass those of digital storage and document scanning. Perhaps the biggest cost savings involved in making the switch to digitized medical record keeping is directly connected to the time wasted searching for and maintaining paper records in contrast to the simple click of a mouse needed to retrieve digitized records.

Another rationale for some medical practices’ reliance upon paper records is quite similar to the explanation given by the last generation of bookkeepers that wouldn’t (or couldn’t) make the transition from paper balance sheets to computerized accounting programs: they were locked into their old ways of doing things. And now they are retired or otherwise out of a job. Similarly, some doctors are creatures of habit afraid of making the change to digital document imaging just because it is new. But as those same doctors ought to know, indeed change can be difficult but alas, it can be good for you too. Contacting a reliable and helpful document scanning company such as scantronix will aide healthcare professionals in taking the first step toward efficiency and reliability.

Technorati Tags: Digital Document Imaging, Document Imaging, Document Scanning, Document Scanning Company, Document Storage, Medical Records Scanning, Online Document Storage

Now perhaps document storage isn’t quite as glamorous as intergalactic travel, but nevertheless, if you are a business owner or point person in charge of your company’s document storage needs, and you are dealing with (to stay a bit too long on the sci-fi metaphor) “space and time” issues of your own, your final frontier may just turn out to be the world wide web. That is, online storage has become an increasingly more popular answer for companies that are concerned with saving time, space, and most importantly, money.

The advantages of online document storage to businesses of all sizes are many. But the big three are as follows…

One: Accessibility. When your data is scanned and saved online, you literally can have access to it twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, with the simple click of a mouse. And you can do so from anywhere in the world.

Two: Safety. One nice feature about the Internet; it doesn’t burn down or get destroyed in a flood. It’s there… permanently. Thus, your data is never going to get lost.

Three: Money. When you have your hard data stored either on your own premises or at another storage space, you need to pay for hardware and storing devices. But when you store your data online, the cash you may have spent on the aforementioned budgetary line items can be spent on, well, whatever else you want!

Still, there some risks with online document storage, most notably is the fact that if the online company providing you with the service is less than credible, they could go out of business and/or you data could be at risk of being stolen. So if you do decide to store your data online or through electronic document storage, make sure you choose a document scanning company with a solid track record and existing clients you can call for a reference.

Technorati Tags: Document Scanning Company, Document Storage, Electronic Document Storage, Online Document Storage

But not so long ago, in the days before OCR service (optical character recognition), if you ran a business, non-profit or an archive and you wanted to convert certain simple text-heavy paper documents to a safer, more efficient and cost effective digital platform, you would have been, well, swimming in a world of paper. In other words, you would have been stuck and out of luck.

Fortunately, today that is no longer the case. But what is optical character recognition scanning, anyway?

Well, to put it simply, OCR is a method of document scanning and converting “image files” (IE pictures of text such as “TIFFs” and “PDFs”) into editable documents that are text searchable. (IE “SPDFs and “.DOCs”). In other words, optical character recognition technology turns practically useless picture of documents into functionally workable documents that can be opened and edited on most word processing, desktop publishing and editing software.

Revolutionary as OCR service technology has been, it has its risks as well. Most notably is the fact that no OCR transition is perfect. Typically, OCR transitions work best when the source material to be converted is simple (EG Times Roman or Courier font), clean, large (12 point or higher) black text against a white background. But the bottom line is that if maintaining the accuracy of your data in conversion is particularly important to you, you need to work with an experienced OCR document scanning company that takes additional steps to ensure that the new digital copies will be as close to the originals as possible.

Technorati Tags: Digital Document Imaging, Document Scanning, Document Storage, OCR Document Scanning, OCR Service

Of course, that was in 1956. We didn’t feel need to take measures to protect our information. And of course, technology such as digital document imaging and OCR scanning services could not have been imagined even.

In 2009, however, regrettably, a business simply cannot operate like it did in the glory days without risking the safety and security of your workforce, your clients, and your confidential financial information.

To say that business data can contain sensitive information is a huge understatement. Indeed, the document storage maintained by businesses and non-profit organizations of all sizes can have life wrecking consequences if stolen or placed in the wrong hands. This is why it is imperative for any serious entrepreneur to make data security and secure document storage a top priority. Moreover, the need for professional document destruction services as well as secure document storage has grown more and more urgent.

Question: Why do I need a document destruction company to dispose of my company’s records when I have a perfectly good paper shredder?

Answer: No you don’t.

The truth is that paper shredders are to data thieves as car alarms are to car thieves. They are ridiculously ineffective when it comes to stopping or even discouraging a motivated thief who wants what you have. At this day and age we have the technology to cease relying on vulnerable paper documents as high speed scanning of documents is readily available to businesses.

Data and identity theft is a multi-billion dollar global enterprise. And it is still growing. If you are running a business, it is your responsibility to keep that growth away from you, your employees, and your clientele. Employing the expertise of a document scanning company may help protect you and your customers from these dangers.

Technorati Tags: Digital Document Imaging, Document Scanning Company, Document Storage, OCR Scanning Services, Secure Document Storage