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Document Management Software Question
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Posted by Andrew Mckay
Sep 1, 2011 at 08:27 PM
I have taken it upon myself to sort out our archives room at our company. No one in the firm has any interest and up until now we have not had any system for managing and archiving old projects. Information has literally been shelved in an archive room and shelves and you go look for the information.
One of the systems I want to start with will be to electronically scan documents and drawings. I have no experience of any type of software that we could use for managing scanned electronic documents. On a personal level and on the home front I have to admit I have enjoyed Evernote, it did at least give me an introduction into tags if nothing else but I suspect this is not the best option.
The amount of scanning is hard to gauge at this stage. Only once I begin clearing the room will I get a better idea. In terms of the Law we have to keep all documents for 10 years. After that we can destroy documents except those involving anything to do with the design of the project . ( We are a firm of civil,structural and mechanical Engineers ) I was intending to focus on those projects over ten years and destroy all non relevant documents while scanning all documents and drawings that cannot be destroyed or could have value to our firm.
Document Management Software probably covers a very large range of software. I am looking primarily at the scanning, archiving, storage and retrieval of information.I had assumed that we would not be looking at a cloud solution but having our own storage and back up.
Any advise on what I should be researching and looking into would be greatly appreciated.
regards Andrew
Posted by Cassius
Sep 1, 2011 at 09:11 PM
Ten to 15 years ago, a colleague investigated what was available at that time and chose PaperPort. I have no idea what is available today.
Posted by Dr Andus
Sep 1, 2011 at 09:28 PM
I don’t have specific software to suggest but I do know that investment banks need to do that sort of thing for compliance purposes, so over the last decade all kinds of fancy systems have been developed for scanning and archiving. There must be a cottage industry selling that sort of software to banks and insurance companies.
Posted by Jack Crawford
Sep 1, 2011 at 11:20 PM
Andrew
As you say there are a lot of solutions out there but you need to tailor it to your requirements. If you haven’t already done so, I would start by trying to answer a series of questions such as:
- what is the total volume of documents I want to scan
- are there are a lot of larger size documents (you mentioned engineering plans) - you may then need a large format scanner
- what sort of resolution do I need (would people be expected to read plans via the software)
- do I need full OCR or just images
- what budget have I got
- is this a standalone system or does it need to be part of the corporate network/system
- is it a once off backlog or achiving exercise or do you want to set up an ongoing document management system
And so on.
I would then research the options - not just online but find out what like sized competitors are doing or what the professional association recommends.
Finally I caution against just going out and buying some scanning software and then trying to craft a solution around it. You need the complementary hardware and software from day one.
Good luck. It sounds like a big job.
Jack
Posted by dan7000
Sep 2, 2011 at 12:48 AM
We do a lot of scanning large volumes of paper in my work. We almost always just send the documents to an outside firm that specializes in document imaging. As an example, I recently was confronted with 50 boxes of documents delivered to me, I looked through them and sorted out about 15 boxes I wanted scanned and sent them out to a company that had it done within a couple of days. They will scan it and then load it into whatever kind of software you prefer, with or without OCR, and many companies will have good suggestions on the software.
For smaller jobs, I agree with another poster that the hardware is really key. We have a Xerox Multifunction laser printer/scanner that does a great job of scanning from its autofeeder documents up to around 100 pages or so. At home I have a Canon multifunction ink jet machine that claims to do the same thing but can’t seem to get past 3 or 4 pages without jamming. If you have a high volume you don’t want it jamming on you ever.
One big difference between doing it yourself and outsourcing is what they call “unitization.” If you scan 100 pages into the Xerox, you get out a single 100-page PDF. If that’s supposed to be 10 documents, you then have to manually go through and split up the PDF into 10 separate files. The outsourcing companies usually handle unitizing, so you get one file (or one database record) per document.
Finally, for a medium-sized job, since you like Evernote, I would consider one of the scanning services offered in Evernote’s “Trunk.” There are a couple of services advertised there that you mail your documents to, and they scan them and put them into Evernote for you. You might get a better price from them than from one of the big imaging companies, but it would make sense to shop around.