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What's the status of the Scanning Project?
When is Go Live?

These are two questions that most of you must have either asked or heard, usually asked together. You may also have successfully completed the project only to realize later that some documents were mixed up. It can happen to the best of us.

Here’s an experience that we came through, barely, of a document mix-up. I lovingly I call it the Identity Crisis. :)

The fiasco occurred in an autonomous Trade Zone. Their requirement was to archive the Visa records of the employees of the companies operating there. Each file contained various records of the employee, but the need from the client was to archive them as one multi-page PDF/A file.

A study of the physical archive showed that each employee had a separate folder. Apart from the usual challenges that all archiving projects of such magnitude face, both the client and us were not prepared for the huge issue we would unearth during a random detailed quality check.

After nearly 500,000 pages of the records were scanned and indexed, we identified a problem: there seemed to be quite a number of files where the pages were interchanged or mixed with those from another folder. For example, the passport could be of Bob while the medical test report could be of John.

Being an outsourced project, the staff employed were not knowledgeable of the content nor were they trained to understand the contents of the pages (mainly for security reasons). Hence, everyone went ahead with their jobs without focusing on the content.

The mix up had occurred over the physical archiving carelessness practiced over time. Since the assumption at the beginning of the project was to trust the integrity of the physical archive, no focus was given to checking that integrity. The client also, unfortunately, had key reasons that prevented them allowing an extension into the project, both in time and money. And the prestige of the client required us to rectify these mix ups at least on the ERM system.

This required us to assemble another production line to retrieve these 500,000 pages and study them page by page and re-archive them. One project and twice the resources. While the time and cost for the client remained more or less the same, our bottom line had taken a hit.

If you are a Client, to assume that your physical archive which has been functional for ages is accurate and consistent could be fatal. Regular reviews to check the integrity of your physical archives can ensure that when they get scanned into a digital record, the inconsistencies in the physical environment do not get inherited into the ERM.

If you are a vendor, never trust the integrity of the physical archive. If the project demands that you to rectify the inconsistencies of the physical archive, it would be advised to do a full and detailed analysis of the physical archive so that you can charge accordingly. At least, considering additional resources required, insert a clause into your contract to ensure that you are not liable for any discrepancies from the client, historical or otherwise.