What additional tasks must be performed to get paper records into a document imaging system?

There are two new tasks that must be incorporated into your daily workflow when you implement a document imaging system. They are:

  Scanning paper documents into the system, and
  Putting identifiers on the electronic document to be used in the retrieval process.

These two tasks can be done by a centralize department or the tasks can be distributed throughout the organization. There are advantages and disadvantages to both methods.

Centralize scanning was once the only practical method to get paper into the electronic system because the cost of scanners was so high that a company couldn't afford any other method. The price of scanners has decreased to the point that companies are currently finding distributed scanning the preferred method to convert paper into electronic records.

Distributed scanning lets each department or each employee scan their own records into the system. Many people find this a preferred method because these employees are familiar with the document and know how to tag it with identifiers for later retrieval.

Another advantage of distributed scanning is that it takes less time to prep documents. With distributed scanning the person generally does smaller batches of documents and will scan them into the system without stapling the documents together, paper clipping them together, and the pages are already oriented correctly.

Centralized scanning still makes sense if you want to assign the task to a single person or if you are converting file cabinets and boxes filled with paper into the system.

Some department heads are concerned that it will take too long for someone to scan documents into the system and tag them with identifiers for later retrieval and will want to simply continue to use paper. It needs to be pointed out that this is a false assumption. Numerous studies have been conducted and have shown that under ideal conditions it takes about 6 minutes on average to file paper documents. To scan and tag a document with three to four identifiers takes under a minute.

The time savings after a document is entered into the system are significant. If every time you need a document it takes you 6 minutes to retrieve it and another 6 minutes to file it back into the paper filing system, you will recover virtually all of that unproductive time using a document imaging system.