When scanning documents, it is important to liberate data from paper as early in the process as possible. Early data capture and extraction will increase the value and usability of your data. Here’s a few reasons why you should capture data early.
Ensure Structured Data: Most data is unstructured, meaning that it is unorganized, unsearchable, and difficult to gain insights. Early data capture will help to foster structured data, preventing your enterprise system from becoming clogged with unstructured data. Regardless of your current state of data, InStream will used Advanced Data Capture to capture data from structured or unstructured forms.
OCR: Optical Character Recognition (OCR) refers to the process where documents are captured and digitally converted into searchable text that you can edit. Full text OCR is an option with Data Capture, along with other forms of recognition such as ICR, IMR and Bar Code recognition. There are many ways to lift data off a scanned page, and InStream can implement any or all of them.
Onshore or Offshore: Your company needs to decide whether you want to implement onshore or offshore data capture. If your company handles time-sensitive documents, then you may want to opt for onshore data capture, so that documents can instantly be entered into your workflow. However, if your company documents aren’t time sensitive, or if you have a large volume of documents to scan, then offshore scanning with InStream will be your best bet.
Support Time-Sensitive Documents: In today’s digital world, manual routing is an inefficient process that can include delivery delays, further resulting in slow cycle times. It is crucial for business documents and data to be routed in a timely fashion. Industries with time-sensitive documents need a solution that guarantees instant routing. When you scan and capture data early, content can instantly be routed into your content repository, allowing for faster delivery.
Maintain Security: If your documents exist in paper form, then your company data is susceptible to security breaches. Early scanning and data capture will increase data security, as data will exist in a digital format and documents won’t be lying around the office for anyone to view or take. Digital documents will be far more secure than your typical loose paper document on a desk.
Maintain Organization: It is very difficult to manage data when dealing with paper documents. Data is hard to extract from paper documents, and manual data entry can often lead to costly errors. Early data capture will centralize your business intelligence, so it isn’t spread out across multiple shelves and file cabinets. Therefore, you will never have to guess where your documents are located. When you need to obtain data for a customer or project, it will be readily available for use. This increased organization will help to streamline business processes, while guaranteeing efficiency.
