This is a recording of our document scanning and capture solution for all versions of Sage ERP, CRM and CRE. Take a look at how you can automate your Accounts Payable processing, Account Receivable, Contracts, HR, etc.
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Ah, the pain of going paperless. The grumpy AP Clerk that stomps her foot and says “I want my paper”. The sweat rolling down the AP Manager’s temple as they hit the green light on the scanning project to go to production. The smiles at the end of the first week, and the “That wasn’t so hard after all.”
There are always bumps in the pavement on the road to any digital AP Process. It takes a while to get the kinks out of the process, and create a “humming” invoice scanning process. It’s funny, but we mostly focus on the process improvement, speed and efficiencies gained on what we call the “front end”, or the ingestion and extraction of information from paper invoices. But there is a whole separate set of benefits that comes from creating a digital repository for later access. Below are some key benefits, post process:
This is a just a short list of “Aftermath” benefits from the initial pain of an AP Automation. Did I miss any? Take a look at my first post here for the front-end “Benefits of AP Automation”.
It is amazing how many businesses still conduct many customer facing operations using paper. With all the talk of the benefits of the paperless office, eliminating paper is still a slow process for most organizations. While scanning can help reduce paper workloads, the next logical step is usually the elimination of paper-based forms with digital forms, or eforms. Below are some of the key benefits of any paperless form initiative:
Did I miss any? Please comment.
In this day and age, law firms and legal departments are looking to technology for the edge in any legal matter. Whether it is the eDiscovery process, or just the task of scanning and performing OCR on a large volume of documents from opposing counsel, document capture applications can provide powerful, time-saving tools. Below are some key features:
This is just a short list, and there are way too many features to include (redaction, bates stamping, etc.).
Probably one of the most ignored planning attributes in any scanning project is projecting required storage for your scanned files. Scanning to TIFF/PDF or any other image format can create huge files if not managed. Below is a quick average file size for specific scanning settings:
Depending on your needs and requirements, 300 DPI seems to be the norm for most scanning projects. This resolution provides the smallest file size with the best image quality for enhanced document capture features like OCR. You can see that grayscale and color create huge files, and are really not required for most document archiving operations, unless there are color markups or photos involved. Tip: Most copiers today like to show off their color capabilities, and will default to color scanning, which can devastate your storage, email, or document repository.
There are so many applications out there on the street that tout “Instant ROI”, “Immediate Efficiency” and “Enhanced Productivity”. But really, when you get down to it, do they really deliver? In the world of document automation, there are some key focal points that can provide immediate value, and most of them revolve around paper and process. So here is a list of the “Big 3”:
In a previous life, my office was right outside our records area, a vast paper wasteland, with over 60 file cabinets. I used to watch one of our administrators walk back and forth all day, filing new paperwork, creating new folders, and filing away an endless stream of paper. Think of document capture software as an efficient clerk, that takes a scanned document, identifies where it needs to go, what folder it needs to go to, and how it needs to be named. With document capture, most customers see a 25-75% reduction in time to file paper documents, immediately.
In that same previous life, traffic flowed all day, back and forth to the filing area, as administrators would look for paper records, sometimes make a copy, and then walk back to their desk. All departments would be seen: Contracts, Service, IT, Finance, etc. In steps document management, where you can access files from your desk in an instant. No longer do you put customers on hold to find out some information. Document distribution is a snap, and now you can easily email or fax documents from within your digital filing interface. Huge time savings, improvement in customer service and many other benefits can be gleaned immediately.
–Ah, the messy paper desk. Walk into your accounting or HR department sometime and just take a peek at what sits on the desktop. Usually it is a mass of paper and folders, being manually processed, reviewed, signed, and then moved on through the organization. In steps electronic workflow. Working hand-in-hand with capture and your repository, now documents can be easily sent to individuals for review or approval. Business rules are now built right in to the system. Need to route all expenses over $1000 to a manager, it’s a snap.
Are you looking to break up and convert a spool file to PDF or Excel format or improve your AS/400 reports by processing and outputting an AS/400 spool file with conditions in the text?
If you depend on complex spool file data to generate your business documents, such as invoices, purchases orders, bills of lading, etc., then you are faced with many different reporting challenges. There are ways that you can work with the spool file output without hand coding and tedious development effort. inFORM Decisions, SmartRouterTM, can be used to facilitate complex filtering and distribution requirements for IBM i spooled reports, forms and business documents, as well as, controlling the bursting and processing of spool files by individual page based on user-defined criteria. The solution can easily and intelligently sort, burst, re-bundle and deliver spool content to any defined target: email address, fax address, Printer Output Queue, the IFS, or any mapped or cloud drive in a PDF format
The spool file data does not contain all of the information you need on your business document.
SmartRouter can include any combination of DB2 data, external spool file attributes, internal spool file content and targets for accurate implementation of unique or complex output requirements. Conditional spool file mapping can easily determine where on the page to include that data. Or simply add text to the iSeries spool file, that can be used as a trigger or mapped and printed.
The spool data output is long and you only need a portion of that data for your business document.
Instead of printing and sending unnecessarily large business documents, reduce the output on the page through useful prompts to quickly define custom conditions. Split out, process, regroup and distribute individual pages of a spool file in order to expedite delivery of business forms, reports and other documents.
How do I convert spool to PDF or Excel format ?
Utilizing iDocs and SmartRouter, you can convert AS/400 spool file into PDF. PDF documents are intelligent text, so all text is searchable. You can even turn spool file data into html, Text, or ZIP formats. Documents can be burst, sorted collated and routed to email recipients or posted to a storage location for web access.
Related keywords: as400 to excel, As400 excel, spool file in as400, iSeries document management, As/400 excel, iseries excel
PDFs are the standard in most organizations for archiving files as records. Whether you are scanning paper files to SharePoint for long-term archival, spooling your print files to PDF or converting your Office documents to PDF / A for long-term storage, there are some key things you need to know. From a scanning perspective, most scanners just produce an image based TIFF/PDF, barren if you will of all metadata. PDFs are a rich format that can become a long-term “suitcase” of metadata for storage and information. Here are some tips on how to make your PDFs complete records:
1. Make sure your Document Capture Software supports the PDF /A standard. PDF /A is a long-term archive standard for image files. It ensures the viability of the file in the long-term, allows embedding of metadata and can prevent alteration of the record. This is a must for any long-term archival of documents. For a summary on the PDF Archive standard, see Adobe’s summary PDFs for Long Term Archive
2. Populate the Standard PDF Headers. When creating a PDF through a document capture or conversion process, make sure you populate the PDF headers with metadata. The standard headers include: author, subject, keywords and title. Populating these fields can speed up searching and indexing, and makes sure critical information is secured about the record. Below is an example of an invoice that was scanned with a document capture application (iCapture), where the standard headers were packed with PDF information:
PDF Standard Headers
3. Build Complete Custom Headers for SharePoint Metadata. Advanced conversion software will build out custom PDF header information, and allow you to “tag” your documents. With this, the PDF can now become a redundant container for SharePoint Metadata column information with column name and metadata values. This is the ultimate in metadata packing, and creates a true portable PDF with all pertinent information. Below is an example of custom headers or properties, where invoice number, date, total and vendor are entered:
PDF Custom Metadata
4. Always use OCR to create text and image PDFs . Using an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) process will convert the image in the PDF into searchable text that can be crawled by SharePoint for the ultimate in searchability. This is a must for all documents.
Did I miss anything? Please comment with anything I missed.
So in our previous article, The Paperless Office: Is It Just a Dream, we discussed some statistics, and the key reasons why organizations don’t move towards an environment with less paper. In this post, we will discuss key focus areas for Paperless Project Success. Below are 5 Tips to Follow:
These are some tips that can be used in the implementation of any paperless technology: advanced capture and scanning, digital forms, digital workflow/business process management, print to PDF or a digital archive. Want more info on these technologies? See our presentation on Key Tech for Paperless. Thoughts?