Document Management Services

Document management is the automated control of electronic documents - page images, spreadsheets, word processing documents, and complex, compound documents — through their entire life cycle within an organization, from initial creation to final archiving. Document management allows organizations to exert greater control over the production, storage, and distribution of documents, yielding greater efficiencies in the ability to reuse information, to control a document through a workflow process, and to reduce product cycle times.

The full range of functions that a document management system may perform includes document identification, storage and retrieval, tracking. It is important to note that document management is not yet a single technology, but several. The major challenge at this time is the integration of several technologies - those for image storage and retrieval and document presentation -- into a single integrated system.

Current technologies allow paper documents to be scanned at high speed and place the desired file format onto a computer hard disk or a Compact Digics (CD). Documents are scanned using Flatbed or drum scanners, which come in with a wide range of speeds and may be used either in a networked configuration, similar to a networked printer, or as a standalone device connected directly to a workstation.

The differences between devices relate to features such as speed (number of pages scanned per minute), color v/s black-and-white, paper size, automatic document feeders, etc. However, most modern scanners capture an image of the document, and send the same to a specified location on a computer or a CD as a graphic image, which cannot be easily altered. The user can perform a variety of functions with these image files without having to rascal or reprocess the document at any stage.

These files could be used to generate hard-copies (prints), transferred by e-mail or facsimile to other locations anywhere in the world. Most important retrieved without major loss of man-hours wasted to hunt for the same. Documents are stored as unalterable images, which have a legal standing in courts of law. Audit trail features can be embedded onto the document image at a later stage to enhance the authenticity of the scanned image.

The access to the scanned documents can be controlled with user-specific password access systems. Security can be set up at the folder- and document-level so that only the administrator can decide who looks at a particular document. Document imaging has been acknowledged as a legal storage alternative to paper. The images take up virtually no space when compared with storing paper. You can store electronic documents on CDs that are kept off site for disaster recovery purposes as a back up.

It's also infinitely more cost-effective to send files long distances on CDs rather than paper. The documents stored in a two-drawer filing cabinet of paper can comfortably fit onto one CD, however, as each page is indexed, any reference can be found in seconds. There is also the ability to perform a full text search to locate any word in the entire report. The cost of storing files electronically as unalterable images is quite inexpensive today.

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