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Andrew Reed, ECM Sales Manager & Mari Martin, ECM Sales Development

Standard Manual Information Processing vs Document Capture

Organizations today process vast amounts of documents in both digital and paper form. In fact, the average U.S. office worker alone uses 10,000 sheets of paper, annually (not including digital copies). Apply this statistic to an organization of 20 or more employees, and you will realize how quickly that can add up – and odds are your organization is no different.

Processing enormous amounts of documents, information, and data is not necessarily a bad thing.  In fact, it could be a great thing.  More documents might mean more orders, which equals more revenue, which results in a growing company.  The problem with large quantities of documents often arises when you consider how this information is being processed.

Most of this data ends up living in some sort of mission critical “Line of Business” system (LOB).  These systems are, usually, great at managing, storing, and organizing information.

What does it take to get that data get into these LOB systems?  Once information is received (paper or digital) majority of companies are manually transferring the data and documents to their destinations.

Standard Manual Information Processing Example

Here is an example of the steps required in a manual process, that most businesses can relate to:

  1. Accounts Payable receives an email with an invoice attached.
  2. Someone needs to monitor that inbox & open the email.
  3. There is pertinent information both in the body of the email & on the attachment.
  4. The attachment is opened, and data is manually transcribed.
  5. The document is saved on a desktop and uploaded to an ERP system.
    (Hopefully, the AP team catches any missing or incorrect information)
  6. The info from the body of the email is also manually transcribed into an ERP system.
    (Hopefully, there are no errors or “fat fingering” while transcribing)

*** Assuming this AP team has their eyes glued to their email 24/7, this procedure just took them approximately 6 – 12 minutes to “process” one invoice.  You can do the math on how much this method truly costs.  Not to mention, your staff could be spending their time on much more valuable, revenue generating work.

Document Capture Example

Here are the steps needed for the same example as above, the only difference is – now you have implemented a Capture Software.   

No, we did not forget to insert a list into this blog…  The point is, there are no steps.

Intelligent Capture Software automatically “ingests” your documents, emails, faxes, etc. by monitoring several end points.  Then, it searches and extracts data from documents using Optical Character Recognition (OCR), or Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR).  Lastly, the data is ready to be seamlessly migrated to other LOB systems, making Capture the first step in your paperless process.

The First Step on Your Journey Begins Here…

Join Applied Innovation for a special, virtual educational event on Thursday, February 18th from 11:00- to 12:00 pm.  It’s the first stop on our Paperless Roadmap Series – Capture.

We’ll share examples, best practices, and methods on how you can increase efficiencies in your business using a Capture Solution.  Learn how to collect and organize all of your documents in one place.  If that’s not enough we’ll also showcase how a capture tool can  automatically extract and index the data on your business-critical documents.

As you journey into this new year, it’s time to explore new ways to enhance and improve your organization.   Take that first step by registering at: www.appliedimaging/events