Say the word "capture" to holders of the CIP certification or other AIIM certificates and you'll be regaled with stories related to the textbook answer “getting information from the original source into the information management system." This is far better than older-school responses having to do with "stuffing a piece of paper into a scanner so we can look at it on the screen,” but there is still a problem:
More than half the people surveyed for a recent AIIM research paper said their organizations retype data from scanned images!
This is hard to imagine in this day and age because it essentially means those people are taking something they receive electronically, then making a hard copy of it, and then making it electronic again by typing it in. This inevitably requires lot more human attention than otherwise would be necessary, and nearly always throws off a whole lot of exceptions – each one of which requires special attention – than otherwise would exist.
All in all, this is a great way to minimize the total value of a capture solution – precisely the opposite of what I presume you set out to achieve.
There is a way around this, and the good news here is that the technologies involved have been around for a long time and are well proven to be effective. Among these are e-forms, OCR, optical mark readers, and the like. But they only work when you use them – something only 45% of the aforementioned survey respondents reported as being true – and they only work best when they are hooked up to a follow-on workflow or BPM capability that lets you actually do something with all the data you have captured.
There's a lot more to be said about this, not the least of which involves a necessary foundational perspective that I call “Weissman’s ‘Big Box’ Theory of Information Management,” acceptance of the fact that the capture involves much more than scanning, and the fact that your ultimate goal needs to be the achievement of Maximum Total Value, not minimum.
To hear it, join me on June 12, from 2-3pm Eastern time for an AIIM Webinar when we will be discussing how to make your capture exceptions part of the process.
So, Make Your Capture Exceptions Part of the Process by registering today so that you'll be able to stop worrying about and start loving your capture solution.
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