Ralph Gammon shares his thoughts about document imaging.
Q: What is the estimated time of arrival for IDR (intelligent
document recognition) to go mainstream and be truly reliable day in and day out
and [what are the] average hardware/software costs for small-to-medium-sized
businesses (SMB)?
Gammon: I think invoice processing is potentially
usable in the SMB market right now. I've done some research to try to determine
exactly what this means. Basically, businesses with 500 employees or less seem
to fit in this category. There are solutions available in the $10,000-$20,000
range that can eliminate annual data entry costs of at least that much. Other
IDR solutions will become available in the mid-market after they are implemented
on the high end of the market and then migrate downstream. Service bureaus also
have processes that leverage IDR and are affordable to the mid-market on a
per-page basis.
Q: Is IDR a separate product, or does it come with the scanner?
Gammon: IDR is a software product that can be packaged with a
scanner by a value-added reseller.
Q: Where would the indexing take place in the distributed scenario?
Gammon: A flexible solution will enable indexing to take place
either at the point of capture or somewhere else, like a centralized data entry
center. I've seen it done either way, sometimes both, with partial indexing done
at the point of capture and the rest centrally. Database lookups can even be
incorporated into distributed sites.
Q: Is Perfect Page similar to Virtual Rescan (VRS) technology?
Gammon: Very much so. The user interface is somewhat different, but
the underlying concept is the same and both technologies were actually created
through a cross-licensing agreement between Kodak and Kofax.
Q: Any comments on scanners using barcodes for capture?
Gammon: Unless it’s a very highend unit, the barcode reading is
typically done on the PC in a post-scan unit. It's a reliable way to do
indexing.
Q: My company hired an outside firm to develop a custom document
image management application using SharePoint. The system replaced an outdated
application using a software application called Digital Paper. This system
contains documents that were tiff files and converted to PDFs. These are
highly-secured documents of blueprints and service-level agreements and contain
an FTP capability for our clients. Is SharePoint recommended for electronic
records management? What out-of-the-box, affordable applications are
leading-edge in this industry segment?
Gammon: SharePoint is fine
for this, but you need to add some tools around image capture and viewing, as
well as accommodate storage of images outside of the SQL (structured query
language) database. Affordable is a relative term, but there are a lot of
out-ofthe- box solutions available that could meet your needs and most will
integrate with SharePoint – albeit leveraging their own repository - though a
couple leverage SharePoint’s repository.
Q: What is the accuracy rate for the auto-classification?
Gammon: It depends highly on the documents.
Q: What are the important considerations for IT professionals when
choosing a simplified capture solution?
Gammon: Integration with
their current systems and line-ofbusiness applications is very important.
Q: How do you answer the
question of accuracy? I know this is difficult, because it involves a number of
factors, but it’s often asked by those we sell to. Can one put a number to this?
Gammon: The best
thing you can probably do is run some tests on your customers’ documents before
giving them a number. Field-level numbers are typically cited.
Q: Does Kodak Perfect Page allow the reading of bar codes for
indexing?
Gammon: No. You need to purchase some sort of document
capture application for that. Perfect Page is designed to improve image quality,
not capture data.
Ralph
Gammon publishes The Document Imaging Report, a
bimonthly run-down of what’s going on in the ECM industry.