Top 10 Misconceptions about Document Management Systems. PDF format

When introducing the advantages of document management systems to an organization, many people may have some preconceived impressions based on prior reviews or based their own past experiences with applications used for “casual” document scanning. They are concerned about the costs and possible complexities associated with production oriented document management systems.

The following are the Top 10 misperceptions and how SmartSearch can easily address each concern.

1. A document management system requires a large investment and can be hard to cost justify.
The reasons organizations adopt document management systems vary and are often the result of a combination of factors - such as:
• The need to improve service levels - by gaining access to important documents to respond to a customer or client’s questions in seconds.
• The need to reduce the amount and cost of space onsumed by filing cabinets and storage boxes.
• The need to improve document security and compliance (e.g. HIPAA, GLB, SEC, FACTA compliance requirements).
• The need to establish a disaster back-up system for important documents by having a digital copy that is backed-up the same way as important data files.
• The need to streamline document centric processes.
• The need to reduce costs by reducing the amount of labor spent filing and retrieving documents, by reducing copying costs and by reducing traditional mailing costs.

Equipment Dealers often work with our clients to define how the systems will reduce costs and result in a positive ROI (return on investment). A brief analysis will often show how a system can dramatically reduce current costs.

Equipment Dealers offer a range of document management system solutions. SmartSearch was designed for smaller businesses or departments within an organization and it is priced to be affordable and easy to cost justify.

SmartSearch has dramatically lowered the traditional price points for a database oriented document management system.

A 3-concurrent user system can typically be fully implemented (software license, support for a year, set-up, installation and training) for anywhere between half to two-thirds the cost of most other document management solutions.

A 3-concurrent user system can usually meet the needs of a dozen or so users since they tend to sign in and out of this application during the course of a day. In other words, if SmartSearch can save just one hour a day of people’s time currently spent physically filing and retrieving documents, the SmartSearch system will result in a positive ROI (return on investment). If one also analyzes current copying costs,
mailing costs and storage costs, SmartSearch can often result in a positive payback in a short period of time (e.g. usually in far less than a year).

2. A system will take a long time to implement and consume valuable IT personnel resources that are focused on other priority projects.

A “typical” SmartSearch system implementation process consisting of setting up two or three document archives (document types) takes about 6 hours of the InfiNet’s technician’s time. The majority of the implementation time is spent training users on the operation of SmartSearch. Very little time is required by the organization’s personnel and valuable IT resources to assist with the set up and installation process.

The IT resources usually just tell us what server they want the application loaded to and the number of workstations that will need access.

3. Scanning documents to a computer will consume a lot of disk space requiring a large server with massive storage.

A typical 8 ½” by 11”document, scanned at 200 DPI will consume about 50KB of disk storage. A typical 5- drawer filing cabinet (13” across and 26” deep) holds about 15,000 pages or documents. This volume would consume about 750MB of disk storage. 20,000 pages would consume about 1GigaByte (GB) of disk storage. Most servers today have hundreds of gigabytes of storage so they can easily store large numbers
of document image files - for very low storage costs.

4. Scanning documents will add a step not currently done so it will add work to the organization.

When done properly, scanning and labeling documents is usually faster and easier than physically filing documents into some form of organized filing system (e.g. patient files, student files, client files, customer files, etc.) therefore leading to labor savings.

Often, the process of identifying (labeling) scanned documents can be a highly automated so the amount of
labor time associated with scanning can be reduced even further. The most significant labor savings result from the ability to retrieve a needed document(s) in seconds from
your computer versus needed to search through a filing cabinet or a storage box.

5. Scanning equipment can be costly.
Many organizations already have good scanning equipment in place with their office copiers that can also scan. Many of these units can support high speed scanning (e.g. 30 to 50 pages per minute or more). The SmartSearch system makes it easy to use these devices for “production” or volume scanning via various software features.

A good, production class dedicated desktop scanner (e.g. 40 pages per minute with image enhancement features) starts at under $1,000.

6. One believes they must retain the original documents for very long periods of time, sometimes forever.

An organization may also have large volumes of archived documents and scanning them seems cost prohibitive.
A review of the types of documents an organization files and archives will often reveal than many (if not most) can be scanned and stored as a digital copy. The originals can be shred or otherwise disposed of.

We suggest that if an organization has questions about the retention requirements for certain types of documents they should consult with their accountant and/or attorney. Many organizations still scan certain types of documents even if they feel they need to keep the original hard copy. Rather than searching through a filing cabinet or a box for the original, these documents can be easily accessed on-line to address questions that may arise requiring a reference to that document or they need a copy of the document(s). The decisions were made to scan documents that still needed to be retained in hard copy form to reduce the costs associated with searching for, retrieving and copying stored documents.

Many organizations chose to not scan large amounts on existing, archived documents. They implement a system such as SmartSearch so they can change their process moving forward and stop accumulating more documents that need to be placed into storage. In other words, they start a “day forward” strategy and purge older documents from storage when they have met their retention requirements. Over time, the volume of documents in storage is dramatically reduced.
Having said that, InfiNet also provides cost effective scanning services - so some clients opt to have some quantity of existing, archived documents scanned for them and loaded into the SmartSearch system.

7. One can’t figure out what kind of folder structure should be set up on their server to store various document image types.

The main advantage of a database oriented system such as SmartSearch is that it overcomes the issues caused by traditional folder structures. Rather than filing a document into a folder, document image files are stored in a database using multiple index values to describe that document (e.g. customer name, customer number, document type, date, invoice number, etc.). This way, documents can be labeled consistently and they can be easily organized and related.
When finding information contained within documents, users often need to see many related documents.

For example, you may want to find all documents related to a purchase order such as a packing list, an invoice and shipping documents – or all documents related to a sales order such as a customer’s purchase order, specifications, your invoice, etc. A user may want to find all documents for a specific client or a subject matter – or find specific document types (e.g. contracts) for a client – or find needed documents for a client for a specific date or date range.

Since SmartSearch is designed with a relational database, a user can quickly and easily locate a document or several documents via easy stored searches (queries). For example, a user may want to locate all documents associated with a purchase order, or all documents for a client for a certain type of legal matter, or all orders placed by a client during a certain period of time.

SmartSearch makes it far easier and faster to locate, retrieve and view documents than a traditional folder based approach.

8. Concern that the database indexing structure initially defined for a category of documents will be set in stone and cannot be changed in the future – so an organization may feel a great deal of planning needs to go into the definition of index structures.

The SmartSearch document management system makes it very easy to add, remove and re-arrange index fields – so changes can be made over time as experience grows with a system.

9. Concern that if sensitive documents are stored as image files they can viewed by unauthorized users. There is also a concern that a user could inadvertently or deliberately alter, delete or export important image files.

Unlike traditional folder based systems, the SmartSearch document management system provides advanced security settings so that selected users have certain, defined privileges. Selected users can be blocked from viewing certain categories of documents (e.g. human resource files). Selected users can be limited to view only capabilities and not have the ability to print, email, export, alter index values or delete
files.

The SmartSearch system also provides a complete audit trail so one can see what actions a user may have performed within the systems. Of course, like any valuable digital database, the files should be frequently backed up to a secure removable media (e.g. tape backup) or to a server located off site.

10. Concern that integration of a document management system with an existing line of business application will be difficult and costly.

Most line of business systems (e.g. ERP, MRP, Project Management Systems and Accounting Systems) that have been deployed over the past 15 years or so employ a database (e.g. Microsoft SQL or Oracle) that conform to industry standards (called Open Database Connectivity – or ODBC standards) that enable diverse databases to share data with each other easily.

Equipment Dealers offers optional software tools that make it easy for the SmartSearch system to work with data contained in a line of business application. This means a scanned document can often be indexed by pulling data from the line of business application.

For example, if an organization generated a purchase order from a line of business application, a packing slip that comes with the delivery of the goods and an invoice for those goods will typically reference the purchase order number. When one scans those documents into a system they often need to only identify the purchase order number and other related information (e.g. vendor name, vendor number, PO date) is
“ pulled” from the line of business system to automatically fill in those index values for the scanned document. Often, by using bar codes on documents, the document indexing process can be fully automated.

Equipment Dealers have successfully integrated our document management systems with a wide variety of
line of business systems in a highly cost effective manner.
Let us show you how easy the implementation and use of SmartSearch can be – and how it can help an organization to reduce current costs.