But if you’re planning on a backfile conversion – scanning most or all of your existing paper documents into a new document management solution, like SAFE – you can’t forget one seemingly simple, seemingly menial and absolutely necessary step. Document preparation. What exactly is document preparation, you ask? To put it simply, document preparation is looking over your documents and getting them ready to scan
With a sloppy sandwich, I could have used a fork, with the chair, I could have planned better furniture placement, with the scanner, I could have done a better job with document prep. Yes document preparation, in an age of technology, is the last thing we want to put effort into before scanning. After all why can’t the scanner remove staples for us! Document preparation is one of those things that if you don’t do it well, you will cause much more frustration and pain later
The process involves several steps: Sorting and Preparation: sorting the originals into content types and removing paperclips, the process of feeding documents into the scanner will go much more quickly and smoothly The act of scanning, using the scanner hardware to digitize paper and create a digital image A quality step when images need to be examined to see if clean-up or enhancement are necessary Indexing to apply appropriate metadata for storage in the ECM repository Storing the electronic image before releasing it to the user Distribution or making the image available to all who are authorized to see it The actual process you use would vary depending on the type of scanning being done and the type of information to be captured
Heck all you have to do is look at my posts on document preparation , accuracy , even IT setup
Trained document preparation operators sorting documents into similar document types, removing paper clips, unfolding corners and inserting document separator sheets?
Scanning was the easy part, but the time-sink of document preparation brought the project to a halt
For example, if your project is to convert one million paper documents in a short amount of time, you would have to purchase several large, expensive scanners; hire document preparation people, scanner operators, and index and QC personnel; set aside facility space for the operation; plus other incidental costs
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